


The Way You Keep The World At Bay

by lady_ragnell



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Modern Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 00:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 56,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17694287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Valira is a disowned princess of the Greenwoods, living a quiet, if lonely, life in a neighboring kingdom. When the press finds her, she takes refuge in the only place she can think of: the palace of King Haoti, her former betrothed. There she finds friends, works in the gardens, meets an oily Prime Minister pushing for a bill, has breakfasts and outings with Haoti, and tries to help him settle into his kingship without involving herself too much in the politics that already lost her one home.





	The Way You Keep The World At Bay

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** familial emotional abuse and disownment
> 
> This uses characters from a D&D game I played with my friends, but if you accept a few fantasy elements, it an easily just be read as a romance!
> 
> Title from "Easy Silence" by the Dixie Chicks.

Valira almost drops the plant pot she's carrying on her foot as soon as she's through the door, which seems like a fitting end for a long day, but she rescues it in time. It would be one thing if it were empty, but it's not: it carries an orange tree that's been tucked into the back of the greenhouse for too long, unhappy, sulking that it's not in the ground growing tall, much as she'd like to tell it that being subject to frost and insects and deer is no great thing, especially for a tree that likes the warm.

The house is quiet and dark, not that she would have expected any different, but she calls out a greeting anyway. “Someone new to stay,” she says, and imagines she can hear the plants waiting to see whether the newest patient she's brought home for extra care will go in the row by the south windows, or in the bathroom for the humidity, or somewhere else.

The answer for the night, anyway, is that it will stay on the kitchen table, where she'll remember to mist it in the morning before she leaves for work. She'll have to move pots around to give it the space it deserves, and that's not a job for tonight.

She sets it on the kitchen table, ignoring the bills and advertisements that have been sitting there for a few days, and pulls some leftovers out of the fridge to warm before opening up a can of cat food and going to her bedroom window, where there's a table shoved up on the back deck for just the purpose.

Only two tonight, her most faithful, and Valira opens the window and lets in some early autumn warmth as she puts the can out and they argue a little over it, well-known and only-half-meant grumbles and hisses until they decide who's first and who's second, as they always do. “It's going to get cold soon,” she tells them conversationally. One of them pauses, wary, but there's otherwise no response. “You just have to tell me that you want in. You'd have more regular meals that way.”

The cats don't seem impressed by that, but then again, cats never do. Valira settles into the chair she keeps by her bedroom window for just such a purpose.

After a while, she sighs. “The spider plant man was back again today. He's bought at least four now, and they're hardy plants. He really can't be killing them that fast. But he always waits for me.” One of the cats glances at her and then goes back to her food. “If he was a journalist, he would probably have asked questions already. He just watches.” And then, with a smile and an acknowledgment of the irony of saying it to the feral cats that are generally her only after-work company: “Maybe he's lonely.”

Out in the kitchen, the oven beeps, and she needs to put together the rest of her food, start a load of laundry before work the next day, and water all the plants in the house, hers and the ones she brings home from the nursery when they need extra care.

There's always something to do.

*

The next morning, Valira opens the door and comes face to face with a lavish bouquet of cut flowers, which are blocking someone's face. “I work at a nursery,” she says, baffled, and the flowers move enough that she can see the older man who keeps buying spider plants, this past week and a half.

“Princess Valira,” he says, and she feels like she's pitched off the edge of a cliff. She shakes her head. “Princess Valira—”

“You have the wrong place,” she says, her voice strange around the words, like her throat has to make room for the panic as well as the sounds. She tries to shut the door, but the bouquet is in her way, and the flowers may already be dead, a horrible waste, but that doesn't mean she wants to crush away the last joy anyone can get from them. “Please leave.”

“Your Highness,” he continues, undeterred, “my name is Solomon.”

“Even if I were who you think I am, I don't speak to the press.”

“I'm not the press.” He holds the flowers out like he expects her to take them, bring them in to rot and not even be of use in cooking. “I'm here on behalf of my cousin, the king.”

Valira clenches her fists. “I have nothing to say to him, and I can't imagine that he has anything to say to me.” Flowers be damned. More will grow. She slams the door, and only winces a little at the faint scent of crushed roses.

Solomon knocks again. The people she least wants to see are always the most persistent. She may have to call in sick to work. Or climb out the back window. Or both. She locks the door again for good measure, in case he gets bold. There's a moment of blessed silence, and then another knock. “He wants to marry you,” he says, quietly enough that he must know she's right on the other side of the door.

Valira opens the door again. Solomon has moved the flowers enough that it's easier to make eye contact with her. “No, he doesn't. He was twelve when our parents decided we should, and when I left home we never heard from each other again, and frankly I'm glad of it. He was a bully and a snob and I don't imagine that becoming king has made him less of either.”

“So you _are_ Princess Valira.”

She rolls her eyes. “Obviously I am, or you wouldn't be here. When I say I'm not, it means you should go away and leave me in peace, but since you don't understand that, here we are.”

“He needs you.”

“He's a young king without many actual responsibilities, surely he wouldn't have any trouble finding a wife.”

“He needs _you_. A sign that he keeps his promises, that he's forgiving, that he wants more than just someone who—”

Valira snorts. “A sign to prove _he's_ something. I don't need his forgiveness, I don't want his promises, and whatever he wants, I don't want to be that. Tell him so. I'm sure he'll be relieved.”

“Ma'am, he doesn't know I'm here.”

“Good. Then he won't know you failed.” She frowns at the bouquet. “You didn't know enough not to bring me dead things, so it's no surprise you got this wrong.” She looks up at him. He's frowning now too, instead of looking hopeful. “I don't know what you really want, at the heart of this. Maybe you really think you're making him happy, or helping him. You're not. And I certainly wouldn't. Him or Tyne.”

“Relations with the Greenwoods are not so important that—”

Valira laughs before she can stop herself. “And if you don't want me for the Greenwoods, I have even less idea why you're here. I won't give you any help with them—the opposite of it, really—and I'm not worth anything else to your cousin. Go home, Solomon. Bring him your dead things and big plans. And don't just leave those spider plants to die in whatever hotel room you're staying in. Return them to the nursery, or take them home, as you please, but don't kill them.”

He fishes a card out of the arrangement of flowers and gives it to her. _Solomon Fyham_ , plain print, nothing else but a phone number. “You can call me if you change your mind, your Highness.”

“I am legally and officially disinherited,” Valira says, and slams the door in his face again.

This time, he leaves. She watches him from behind the curtains, and she leaves through the back window anyway, startling a cat hoping for last night's leftovers as she goes. She's five minutes late to work, but it's the first time she has been in years of working there, so while she gets a few odd looks from her co-workers, none of them says anything.

She should have thrown the card away, but she tucked it in her pocket so it wouldn't collect dust on the floor, and now it's a weight in her pocket that's making her want to run, go across the sea to Erelest or Norene or somewhere else she'll be left to herself. If she has to get on a plane to the Boreal Valley, she will.

Solomon doesn't show up again that day, or the next, and Valira gets a bit of teasing from Sylva who works many of the same shifts she does that her gentleman friend has given up on her, but after a week of nothing, she breathes out a sigh of relief and hopes he's done the smart thing.

*

The knock on her door comes almost three weeks later, when she's just starting to let herself relax.

Valira answers it only because ignoring it, not knowing who is at the door, seems like the greater risk. If it's a lost traveler happy to see a cottage at the edge of the woods or someone trying to sell her magic or knives or cleaning supplies, she can send them on their way. If it's Solomon again, she'll know that he can't take a hint and that she needs a way to keep herself out of the public eye before he throws her to the press to force her hand.

Haoti Ewhoza is a lot taller than he was when he was twelve, and a lot more tired than he looks on the television, when she catches a rare glance of a news program. Valira is too surprised to slam a door on him, and he seems too surprised to say anything, so they stand there in transfixed silence until she can muster anything to say, and then it's only “I'm not buying anything today” because she has no control over her mouth.

“Oh, I'm not—” He looks down at his hands, and the little pot he's cradling between them, then back up at her, anxious somehow. “This isn't to sell. No strings here. It's a present.”

“A present.” It's evening, and her outside light isn't on, so she has to squint to see the familiar bunch of flowers sprouting up out of the pot. Before she can think better of it, she's reaching out, brushing her hand over it, and it releases a familiar cloud of scent. “Valerian,” she says around the lump in her throat.

“When I told Solomon that I was coming to apologize, he told me to bring nothing dead.”

Valira pulls her hand back and doesn't take the pot. He may say there aren't strings, but there always are. “And what do you have to apologize for? He said that he came without your permission, so it's not your fault.”

“I still thought you wouldn't want to see him again like that, and that you do deserve an apology. And once I knew you were in Tyne—people worried about you.”

“ _You_ did?” Valira asks, disbelieving, and he winces. Of course he does. She's forgotten how to be polite. “You didn't deserve that. But I'm surprised my—I'm surprised the Greenwoods didn't tell you where I was.”

“I knew when you were still … under their protection, I suppose you'd say. When you left that, I suppose either they lost touch with you, or they gave up all hope of making use of me through you and wrote it all off.” With every word, he seems to shake off some of the awkwardness, retreating behind a shell, the public face he's shown ever since his father died nearly half a year ago and he was crowned the youngest king in a century, and his wild youth came abruptly and completely to its end. “I'm sorry. For Solomon, and for bringing up things I think you'd rather have forgotten. If you invite me in, I'll explain.”

Valira doesn't want apologies, or explanations, or herbs that bring back memories, but she might need them. “Come in, then. I don't have much in the house to feed a king, but you can have tea.”

“You don't need to offer me anything,” he says, but he comes in when she steps aside and looks around, frowning a little.

She sees the house as he must see it. It's all still Alya's, from faded wallpaper to unevenly hung coat hooks, dusty because she doesn't really care about cleaning. The kitchen is the most lived-in room in the house, with neat pots of herbs lined up on the windowsill and jar after jar of tea blends Alya made in the cabinet next to the kettle, the supply still holding on well even two years after her death.

“Sit down,” she says, and gestures at the table. It's messy too, with the remnants of her own life rather than Alya's, which feels worse somehow, but she won't let herself show it. If he sees her looking for coupons and sorting mail, it's none of his business. “What kind of tea would you like? I'll need some myself, so it's no trouble.”

“Whatever you're going to drink, then.”

Valira turns on the stove for the kettle and looks through Alya's jars, finding a spiced blend she likes when she needs to feel warm and calm. The plants don't grow around their area and she can't recognize a scent from books of plants elsewhere, so it's one she rations carefully, in case she can't figure out how to blend it again. Still, if ever an occasion called for it, it's this one. “Explain, then. Is Solomon a romantic, a schemer, or a fool?”

“All three, probably. He's my mother's relation and I'd rather trust him than anyone from my father's side, but he still shouldn't have come to see you without my permission. No, without me asking him to, which I wouldn't have done.”

“But what did he _want_? I'm not a symbol of alliance to the Greenwoods anymore.” She turns around and finds him staring down at his hands. He's still holding the pot of valerian, hasn't even put it on the table. “You can put that down,” she says. “Thank you. I don't tend to grow it.”

He puts it obediently on the table but keeps staring at it like it might have some answers for him. “Perhaps I should have chosen something else. I only remembered that it was your flower, that you were named in part after it. I should have realized that would be as bad as it was good.” He finally looks up at her. “Solomon worries about my popularity. About my lack of it.”

“I don't pay too much attention to the news. Too many familiar faces. Why would you be unpopular? You're a young king. That seems to me that it would be enough for most.”

“I'm inexperienced, and Father didn't train me much. The politicians all know it. Prime Minister Seath is trying to help me, but that will take time. And as for the rest … they've seen little of me since I stopped being so wild. What people really want, I'm told, is for me to marry, or at least show that I care about something. Solomon is trying to help with that.”

“And thus me,” says Valira, and turns again to busy herself with mugs and measuring out tea into strainers. “He doesn't want me for the Greenwoods, he wants me because of the press.”

“They would write, I'm told, all sorts of articles about our romance, me tracking you down after you disappeared from the public eye and keeping the promises my father made to your parents. Marrying anyone would help, he assures me, but marrying you would be best.”

“And it doesn't matter that neither of us wants to?” She glances over her shoulder at him. He's moved on to staring at her wall. Considering there's nothing on it but Alya's wallpaper and a calendar from two years ago that she hasn't bothered to change, he's probably not looking at anything at all. “You don't want to, do you?”

“I don't need a wife. I need allies.”

The kettle chooses that moment to boil, and Valira busies herself pouring it, turning just enough to see him shake his head at the offer of sugar and milk when she raises them. “So you aren't here to apologize,” she finally says. “I'm no more useful to you as an ally than as a wife. I don't have power in the Greenwoods anymore, remember?”

“I don't need you to. I remember ...” Haoti looks down at his mug of tea when she gives it to him, blows on it a little, and makes no move to drink, since it's still steeping. Even having it in his hands seems to steady him, though, because he looks up at her while she stands over him. “You used to yell at me when I did something you disapproved of. Maybe I don't mean ally. Advisor, maybe?”

Valira, her own tea in hand, sits down across the table from him. “You're telling me you want someone to yell at you? It seems like you already have Solomon and the Prime Minister to tell you what you're doing wrong.”

“I'm being foolish, I know. I really don't want anything of you that you don't want to give. If I can do anything for you, or if Tyne can ...”

Valira frowns and blows on her tea, fishing the leaves out of it. Across the table, Haoti does the same, holding the strainer awkwardly in his hand until she pushes an old newspaper in his direction for him to put it on. He makes a face, but he does it. “You and Tyne don't owe me. I stayed here when I left college because it was easier to fade away if I didn't cross a border, that's all.”

“It's not a matter of owing, it's a matter of responsibility. I was supposed to marry you. The least you deserve is a happy life.”

“I'm content enough.”

Haoti looks around her kitchen, and she sees her life through his eyes: a quiet, untidy house on a quiet, untidy street on the outskirts of a quiet, untidy town. An old truck that only starts when it's not too hot or too cold, and a house that always smells of soil because of the plants packing every windowsill that gets sun. He'll have done his research on her, and he'll know that she works quietly at a nursery and has for years now, from just a few months after she left college. He might even know how few people in town she knows or sees. Her cheeks burn, but she doesn't try to explain that it's a better life than what she'd have if she was still under her family's protection, even if her quiet life would be fancier, then.

“If that changes, tell me. It's the least I can do. And if you ever want to risk the spotlight, I'm trying to bring the gardens back to something of what they were when Mother was still around. Whether you want to design the gardens or plant in them, you'd be welcome.”

Valira only visited Tyne a few times as a child, and the only good things about it, as far as she was concerned, were Queen Aredhel and her gardens, full of flowers and herbs and vegetables, a feast for the senses. “Where is her Majesty these days?”

“After the coronation she went back to her quiet countryside retirement. She's—no matter. With your permission, I'll pass on your greetings. She always liked you.”

“Yes. Tell her I hope she's well.” Valira takes a drink of her tea so she doesn't tell him not to say where she is. Hopefully he'll understand it without it being said, but the longer he's in her home the more old manners start to assert themselves and the worse it seems to say outright.

“She knows … forgive me. She knows what it's like to not want attention from the public. She'll be glad to hear about you, and she'll send a message I won't press on you.” He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Consider yourself warmly greeted.”

“Thank you.” Valira feels like she's failing in something, in this conversation, but she doesn't know how to save it, and Haoti doesn't either. They're two people who were once supposed to be married, who never had anything in common then and have less in common now, but there's still a connection. A sense of duty, maybe. She takes another gulp of tea, and it almost scalds her throat.

“I'm intruding,” he says, and finishes his tea in three decisive swallows, putting the mug down with a face like stone, though she knows his tongue and throat must be burning. “I shouldn't have even stayed this long. If you ever need me, you can call on me.” He doesn't produce a card like Solomon did, but a pen, and she shoves a scrap of paper at him, watches him print out his phone number. “You deserve … neutrality isn't more important than family. Your parents were in the wrong.”

Valira stands up. “That's enough. They did what they had to.”

“I'm sorry. But it needed to be said.”

She wants to yell, wants to ask him if he honestly thinks she hasn't spent the time since she was seventeen alternately wishing her family consigned to the Nine Hells and knowing, soul-deep, that they were right that she was impulsive and dangerous and likely to get them into a war. She takes a deep breath instead. “Unwanted advice for unwanted comfort, then: if you want allies, find some. Nothing is stopping you except yourself. You should feel ashamed of yourself if I'm the best I can do.”

Haoti raises his chin, and after a moment he stands. “You're still a valuable ally as far as I'm concerned. But I won't bother you further. Thank you for hearing me out, and my apologies again on Solomon's behalf. I'll leave you in peace from here on in.”

Valira sees him out, shutting and locking the door firmly after him, and hears a car start up only moments later. It only occurs to her than that he must have brought someone, a bodyguard or two, a chauffeur, a secretary. Royalty doesn't get the luxury of traveling alone. She has no idea what it means that he left them in the car. Maybe it was just thoughtlessness, leaving them bored in the dark in the woods. Maybe it was care for her privacy.

It doesn't really matter, but she hopes it was the latter.

There are cats yowling at the back window, but she waits a full five minutes after the taillights of his car go out of sight before she opens her window to feed them.

*

It only takes four days after that for the reporters to find her. First there's only one, snapping a picture of her at work, and then within a day it's a swarm, and she walks out of the nursery greenhouse at the end of the day to find twenty of them. Some are shouting real questions, about where she's been, if she was disowned for her political remarks. Some are asking if it's true she had a child with one of her parents' gardeners or if she was arrested.

Valira ducks back inside the greenhouse, scuttles away from the door, and drops to a crouch between some of the rows of seedlings to protect her from being photographed through the glass. It only takes a minute for one of her coworkers to find her, Telah, a motherly dwarven woman who used to work as a nurse but likes raising plants during her retirement. “Do you have your car here today?”

Valira nods. “Doesn't matter. If they're here, they're at my house, too. They'll find me anywhere in town.” She knows that from bitter experience. They found her at college, too, before she left. This is her refuge, and she can't stay. “Shit.”

“Honey.” Telah frowns at her and shakes her head. “Do you have anywhere to go?”

Valira swallows, shakes her head, nods, shakes her head again, and Telah just keeps watching her, patient. “Maybe,” she finally says. “I can't … I just wanted to stay. I don't want to leave Alya's house.”

Telah scowls at the greenhouse door. “You can have the police run those vermin off, if you like.”

“They'll come back. Or different ones will come. And people will start talking, and ...” She shakes her head. “You're kind. But I need to go.” And then, because Telah seems anything but surprised and she has to ask: “Did you know?”

Telah purses her lips. “Well, many of us guessed, I think. But you didn't seem to want to talk about it, or about anything. You really think you have to leave?” Valira swallows and nods. “Where's your spare key? Wherever you're going, you can't bring all your plants with you. We'll take care of it for you, and those cats who keep the squirrel population down in your bit of the woods. So you can come back.”

Valira wants to explain that she can't, but maybe she can. She has to believe she can, anyway, that Alya's little farming town on the edge of the woods can be safe again, and Alya's house can be safe again, and she can go back to quiet and green things and cats that would as soon scratch her as let her touch them. It's the best hope she has, because in the meantime, she can only think of one place to go.

“There's a hollow tree just north of Alya's old dry well, the one nearly in the woods. The key is in an iron box under some moss in it.” Telah nods, and Valira lets herself breathe, and relax a little. That, at least, will be taken care of. “You know how to take care of everything. I'll bring the most delicate with me, if I can. I'll keep my phone, and if it looks like I'll be gone for a while, I'll figure out how to rent the place out. It shouldn't sit empty.”

Telah squeezes her arm. “Alya would be glad to hear you say it. I'm assuming you need to go there now, to pack up a few things?” Valira nods. “Then good luck.”

This time, when Valira leaves the greenhouse, she barrels through the wall of press as quickly as she can, ducking her face from the cameras and pulling away from the few of them who dare reach out to try to grab her as she goes. They scatter to their vehicles when she gets to the truck, and she's aware of something happening as she drives away, local cars blocking most of them from following.

They still reach her house not five minutes after she does, but five minutes is enough for her to get inside and lock all the doors, block all the windows. The flashes of cameras look like lightning through the curtains.

She gets out her phone, and the slip of paper that's still sitting on her kitchen table. She hadn't thought she would ever need it, but she dials and waits for an answer.

His gruff greeting is pitched low, a disguise against anyone who isn't supposed to have the king's private number, but she recognizes it. “Haoti,” she says, cutting across him. She can't bear to dance around this. “I need your help.”

*

Her phone rings some four hours later. It's darker outside, but the press hasn't left yet, and last time, they got her number from a study group partner, so she's wary picking up the phone, but Haoti promised help would come sometime after dark, and if it's a journalist, she can hang up. “Hello?”

“Hello. I've been sent to get you by his Majesty. Are you safe inside the house?” It's a woman's low voice, brisk and businesslike. No one she knows.

“I am, but forgive me—do you have proof that you're here from the king and not an enterprising journalist?”

“Smart question.” The woman sounds pleased. “My name is Phillippa Windrose, and I'm deputy head of security for the king, but I don't want to cause a disturbance by coming to your door and showing you my identification until you're ready to move. Will his phone number do?”

It's not ideal, but it's the only proof she has. She didn't think to work out a code phrase with Haoti, and she's reluctant to call him again, after the awkwardness of their earlier call. “For now.”

“You'll still get my identification when I reach the door, don't worry,” says Phillippa, and reels the number off.

Valira breathes a little easier, with that in the air. “Very well. I have one bag of clothes and things and four plant pots.”

There's a startled little pause. “You don't want more than that?”

Of course she does. She wants Alya's teas and the contents of her compost pile, which were just perfect and almost ready to be used, and every other plant in her home, and just the comfort of the house itself. “This will do,” she says, even as she walks to the kitchen and pulls down some of Alya's jars of rarer tea blends, and a few jars of jam and pickles she put up herself last summer, made just to her taste. She doesn't have that many clothes. They'll fit.

“Very well, then. I'll come up to the door to help.” Valira eyes the door with misgivings. People have been knocking on it all afternoon. “Be waiting. I can keep them off you. Give me a pattern of knocks, if you like.”

It's almost familiar, remembering how to deal with bodyguards and security threats. She'd thought she would never need to again. “Three fast, a pause, two more slower. And then your ID under the door, it doesn't fit well in its frame so it should fit.”

“That's handy for us now, if not for security in general. I'm going to hang up, your Highness, and I'll be there in under a minute.”

Valira collects her plants and her bag, dumping the jars into that with hopes that none of them break if things get rough outside, and goes to the door. Sure enough, it's less than a minute before there are three quick raps, a breath of a pause, and then another two, slow and deliberate. She taps back, once, and the door rattles a little as a thick ID badge is passed under it. There's the stylized roaring dragon that is Tyne's crest, and on its reverse, Phillippa Windrose's name and title. It looks right. But then again, she's not experienced guessing at fakes.

“What do I do?” she asks through the door. “I and all of my things are right here at the door.”

“Nobody is going to bother you too much with me here flashing ID. You open the door, hand me whatever you want me to carry, and follow me to the car. I'll get us out of here.”

“It's just you?” she asks, stalling by passing the ID back under the door.

“Believe me, just me is plenty.” The way she says it, Valira believes her. “Ready?”

Valira takes one frantic last look around at Alya's entrance hall, where she'd stared around, exhausted and heartsore, when Alya first brought her back after finding her with her car broken down on the side of the road. It's been a refuge, and a home. She can only hope she'll see it again. “Ready,” she says, and opens the door.

The flashes of cameras in the darkness blind her, and Valira shoves her bag of clothes and tea and the biggest plant pot, the one containing the orange tree she can't bear to leave behind, at Phillippa Windrose, who takes them without so much as a grunt. She scoops up the other three, a listless geranium, a stunted aloe, and Haoti's valerian, and leaves the house, shutting and locking the door behind her.

Phillippa gets her through the journalists, who still seem to number about twenty but who shout loudly enough for three times the number, and to a small silver car. Valira takes care putting her plants in the back seat, and Phillippa buckles in the orange tree like it's a small child before hurrying her into the car and starting it, the two of them flying away down the road before any of the journalists can quite make it to their vehicles.

Valira sneaks a look sideways. Phillippa is half-orc, tall and strongly built, wearing the omnipresent neat black suit of a government agent with her long hair in a ponytail, and she's watching the road with concentration, taking a turn here and there that must be more to throw off pursuit than get them to wherever they're going. “Thank you, Agent Windrose,” she finally says. “Where are we going?”

“Phi, please.” She gives Valira a glance as they pause at a stop sign, long enough for Valira to register concern, curiosity, maybe pity. “Nearest transportation circle is two hours from here, and that gets us to the palace.” Another flick of a glance. “The king told me to say that you don't have to stay there if you don't want to, but that we know how to take care of the press there. We do. You can take a little time, decide what happens next.”

Valira leans against the window. She hasn't been more than twenty miles from town in a long time, and she doesn't like how big the world suddenly is, suddenly has to be. “Does anyone there know how the press figured out where I was?”

“You've had two visitors from the palace lately. I imagine it must be that, though his Majesty at least was very careful. I saw the security plans. But if someone in that town were going to sell you out, they would have done it years ago.”

Valira is happy to blame Solomon. Even if the journalists followed Haoti's trail, Solomon was the reason he came to her in the first place. But blame doesn't answer the real question, the one she can't help blurting into the silence before it can really become one. “What am I supposed to do?”

Phi's face is unhappy, all shadows, with the light gone from the sky and no streetlights to light their passing. “Do you want an answer?”

That startles her, but then again, maybe it shouldn't. She's met royalty who talk around bodyguards and staff like they're stone walls who wouldn't understand and wouldn't have anything interesting to say even if they did. If it's the treatment Phi expects, it's only proof that whatever glimmers of kindness she spotted in Haoti were conditional at best. “I don't ask idle questions. I don't talk much, usually. I just don't know what comes next. The last time I ran away, I ran away from being royal. Now it seems like I'm running to it.”

“Keeping yourself safe isn't the same thing as running,” Phi says, but it's absent, like she's thinking something over. “Exactly what you need,” she finally says.

Valira frowns. “What?”

“That's what you do. Exactly what you need. Whether that's staying or going, or working in the king's gardens.” Phi smiles, tilting her head towards the back seat. “I have a friend who works in the gardens and keeps the bees that pollinate them. If you like, I'll introduce you.”

That's not what she means, and Valira wants to say so, but Phi is gentler and more patient than she has a right to, and in the end, she's too tired to fight someone who doesn't want to be fought. Not when she's walking into a situation where she needs all the allies she can find, even if it's just so they'll help her disappear. “I'm good with plants,” she finally says. “My mentor was a druid of sorts, and I suppose so am I. I'll be happy to meet your friend.”

“Good. It's not so bad there. Especially these days. And Kithri in the kitchen is going to take one look at you and ask what your favorite kind of pie is.”

Pie is another memory of Alya, who preferred it to cake but couldn't make a crust to save her life and bought them from the town's small bakery on special occasions, usually supplying the berries herself. Whoever Kithri is, Valira will be glad to ask her for whatever kind of pie she has in stock.

“You can nap, if you like,” Phi says. “It's a long drive, and you've had a long day. There's a bed waiting for you at the palace, and I'll wake you up when it's time to get in the transportation circle.”

Valira feels like there should be more to say, and like perhaps she should apologize for asking impossible-to-answer questions when they've known each other for ten minutes, but she's too tired, to really care, so she closes her eyes and lets the movement of the car send her drifting into a doze.

She wakes some time later to a gentle shake of her arm. “This car's a rental,” says Phi. “I can't drive it through the circle or it will be an inconvenience. Just a bit of a walk, with your luggage, and we'll be right in the private area of the palace, and someone will be waiting to get you to your room, even if you're just going to be in it for a night.”

Valira thinks she mumbles thanks, and makes sure she has her plants securely in her arms as she trots along behind Phi. There's a tired wizard nodding over a book, and Phi exchanges a few polite words with him before he opens up the circle for them, and Valira steps out in a place five degrees cooler, a courtyard in the private area of Haoti's palace.

There's a quiet bustle of people as soon as she steps through, calling her “your Highness” and asking if she has more belongings coming. Phi, maybe realizing that Valira hasn't talked to strangers more than she had to in years, answers the questions for her and claims that the king asked her to act as Valira's bodyguard for the night, so she'll escort her to her room.

There aren't stairs to get there, which is a faint surprise, but Valira is too exhausted to care. When Phi promises to see her in the morning, Valira just yawns out something she hopes is polite, shuts the door, and falls into the bed fully dressed.

*

When Valira wakes, early as she always does, it takes her a full and panicked minute to remember where she is. The bed is big, and the mattress doesn't creak at all when she rolls over, and she's on top of a bedspread much nicer than hers, neck a little out of joint from the extra pillows that have been stuffed on the bed. The rest of the room is just as big, and Valira would roll her eyes, but it's only to be expected, and she could have been assigned worse rooms to be certain.

There's plenty of sun through curtains even though it's not long past dawn, and an extra door that opens out into some kind of private courtyard, fenced around and containing a few dormant garden beds. Whoever chose her room chose it thoughtfully. Chose it hoping she might stay a while.

Her phone, predictably, is dead, and it takes her less than a minute of rummaging through her suitcase to discover that in her panic and hurry she didn't think to pack anything to charge it with. If she wants news updates, or word from anyone with her number, she'll have to find someone to ask about it.

Next order of business is her plants. The room itself contains a pothos spilling over in its basket by the bathroom, a nice easy bit of green for staff to take care of, and it doesn't seem to need water or any other care. The rest of the plants, after being transported to a new place with different humidity and temperature after getting an arcane shock traveling through the transportation circle, need more care, and she finds a glass cup in the bathroom that does well enough for bringing them water, even if she has to sprinkle water on the orange tree's leaves rather than misting it as she prefers.

When that's done, she's hungry, but she doesn't know how to take care of that. The last time she visited Tyne's royal palace, she was dragged to breakfast every morning and made to socialize with Haoti, but at home, if she wasn't with her cousins she was old enough that she could have breakfast delivered.

With that hope in mind, she opens the door, peering out in hopes of catching someone who looks like they know what's going on, and startles a bearded man in a suit who's guarding her door and smiles as soon as she's finished swinging her door open. “Good morning, princess,” he says with a smile and a hand offered for her to shake.

“I'm not,” Valira says, as awkward as she ever is, and shakes his hand before he can withdraw it, when he winces. “Sorry. Good morning. My phone is dead, and I don't know where to get breakfast. I'm hoping you do.”

“Well, I can take care of a lot of that for you. Someone will have a charger you can use, and my wife tells me you should get pie for breakfast, and I have a radio that will call the kitchen.” He pats it at his side.

Valira dredges through her memories of the night before. “Does that make her Kithri?”

His mouth twitches. “No, though I'd like to hear you ask Kithri that. No, I'm Terry—Phi's husband. She had to get some sleep, but she asked me to look after you, so I'm your security detail for the morning.”

“Where's—where's the king?” she asks, changing her mind midway about whether she wants to call him by name.

Terry shrugs. “Either still asleep or in an early meeting. The Prime Minister has been hanging around, so the early meeting is likely. Once you've had breakfast I'll see if we can track him down for you, I imagine you have plenty to discuss.”

She really has no idea if they do, but probably. “And … the press?”

His lips thin. “You worry about the press later. They're trying to make a sensation, but that's not your problem.”

Of course it is, but he's being so kind that she doesn't bother to argue with him about it. “I imagine the king will have a few things to say about it, anyway,” she says, and he nods, though he still doesn't look very pleased about it. All she remembers of bodyguards is stone faces and awkward pauses, but between Phi and Terry she's wondering if things have changed, or if it's just that she has. “Once I've met with him—Phi mentioned, and maybe you'd know? She said she knows someone in the gardens, and I have a few plants, so I'd like to know who I could talk to about making sure I have the supplies to take care of them.”

“That's—huh.” He tilts his head, and then his smile grows again. “She must have meant Quil. I know her too, yes, and it shouldn't be hard to find her whenever you like.”

Valira would love nothing more than to track down a gardener, or a beekeeper, or whatever this Quil technically is, and pretend that it's a day at a different nursery, and that she could just spend day after day taking care of her plants. “If it's convenient for her and for whoever's escorting me, then I'd love to meet her after the king is done with me.”

Terry frowns at her for a moment, and then smiles again. “I'm sure we can arrange it, and I always like an excuse to visit Quil if I'm still on shift then, so it shouldn't be a problem.” He picks up his radio. “I'll let the kitchen know you need a tray. Tea?”

“Hot water. I brought my own tea.”

That's odd, she knows it is, but he just nods, amiable. “Hot water, then. And pie for breakfast. Kithri will insist.” He presses a button on his radio, fiddles the channel around. “Kitchen,” he finally says, to the sound of faint static, and then lets go of the button. “You don't have to wait through the breakfast order unless you want to.”

Valira realizes she's standing awkwardly in a guest hallway of the king's residence, wearing yesterday's clothes, the ones she's had on since her shift at the nursery before the press showed up. She hasn't cleaned herself up, brushed her hair or her teeth, done anything to make herself presentable. “Right,” she says. “Just knock when breakfast is here, then. And if you find a charger.”

“Right, charger,” he says, smile warm and a little puzzled, and Valira shuts herself back in her room.

By the time the knock comes, Valira is clean, or at least cleaner than she was, changed and fit to see company, even if the clothes she packed are too shabby for anything that she might need to do today but maybe talk to the gardener.

The knock heralds not just Terry, but also a halfling woman with a tray who fixes Valira with a gimlet gaze. She's the age where she should look grandmotherly, but mostly she looks lean and sharp and like every year she's lived has only made her more dangerous. “Well, he wasn't kidding about the need for pie,” she says, and Valira realizes with a start that this must be Kithri, herself, when she was expecting an underling. “Strawberry. Do you like it?”

Valira blinks a few times and takes the tray when Kithri gives it an impatient rattle. “I do. Is there anyone who doesn't like strawberry pie?”

Kithri's smile is tiny and satisfied, and Valira feels like she's done something right. “That's what I said,” she says over her shoulder, and there Terry is, with a cord in hand that Valira takes a moment to identify as a charger. “He says you have tea, too.”

Valira rattles the infuser she's already filled with her chosen blend. “I brought some. My mentor made it.”

Kithri sniffs at it, makes a face, sniffs again, and shrugs. “Not the best match with strawberry pie, perhaps, but well enough. A very good blend, don't get me wrong,” she adds, perhaps seeing Valira beginning to bristle. “I'd use it more with scones, though. But not everyone is as exacting with pie as I am. Young one, are you just going to stand there? Hand the girl her charger.”

Terry grins like this kind of treatment is only to be expected. “Well, her Highness hasn't invited me in yet, so yes, I'm just going to stand here.”

Oh, gods damn it. “Please, come in.” She sets the tray down on a nearby table, even if there's no chair at it, and goes to fetch her phone, then to search for a place to plug in the charger. Terry, it seems, has already found one, and beckons her over to plug it in. “I'm not a Highness,” she says belatedly, and for what feels like the hundredth time. “Disinherited. No title. Valira is fine, honestly.” And then, because it's bound to come up: “Wayfinder, not Linnaeus. I have the legal paperwork.” She winces. “Or, rather, the safe at the house does. Damn. I was a little distracted when I packed yesterday.”

“We'll send someone to fetch it, with your permission, or it can wait until you're ready to go back,” Terry assures her, not asking any questions.

“You don't need paperwork right now,” Kithri says, snatching the phone out of Valira's hand and leaving it to charge on the floor, since the outlet isn't near any convenient flat surfaces. “You need pie. Eat. And set your tea to steeping.”

Kithri is as easy to thoughtlessly obey as Alya, with her same inexorable force of will, if with less of the gentleness that went hand in hand with it, and Valira responds to the instructions with relief, taking care of her tea and then taking a bite of the pie that's been brought, along with a hard-boiled egg and some sausage and toast with a selection of jams to choose between. Kithri has decided she's hungry, it seems, and Valira barely has the thought before she realizes that she is, and then she's eating in earnest, hovering over the table until Terry gently sets a chair behind her and Kithri tugs her down in it.

“The king's people say he's in with the Prime Minister this morning, but also that he would rather not be with the Prime Minister,” Terry says while she eats. “So when you're ready, we can go and he'll have to make his excuses, and you can have whatever conversation you need to have. And Phi says good morning, even though I told her to sleep in.”

“Oh.” Valira has no idea how to respond to that. She's pretty sure that she's had more words directed at her in the past week than she has in the two years since Alya died, and Alya wasn't talkative to begin with. She was never exactly easy with people as a child, but it's only gotten worse. “Well, my thanks to her. Will I see her again today?”

“Probably,” Terry says, either pretending not to notice or just not caring that she's awkward and talking with her mouth full. “Deputy chief of security is really a fancy way of saying that she's one day going to be in charge of security for the queen, and you're an important guest, so you're a good trial run.”

Valira drops her fork with a clatter and winces, making sure the fine pottery isn't chipped. “I'm not ...” She winces, but Terry and Kithri both seem like the sort of people who will have influence, be able to pass on or circumvent whatever gossip is flying around about her. “I'm not here to marry him.”

Kithri smacks Terry's elbow in a way that makes it clear that if she were taller, the back of his head would be in danger. “And don't you let anyone say so,” she says, with a glower in Terry's direction that's half show and half, clearly, very real. “People talk about things that are none of their business, and you have plenty to worry about without some attempt at marriage.”

Terry seems to have a healthy amount of fear about it, judging by the way he dances out of the way. “I wasn't trying to imply that. Sorry, Valira.” She relaxes a little at the sound of her name, and he seems to realize it. “Now, I'm going to stop putting my foot in my mouth and go out to the hall and have boring radio conversations and make sure my wife is eating her own breakfast, but you let me know when you want to go anywhere and we'll go rescue King Haoti from Minister Seath.”

He leaves, and she expects Kithri to do the same. If she's in charge of even just baking in the kitchen, she has more important things to do than watch a guest eat breakfast, but she doesn't seem inclined to do any of those things. “Are they newly married?” Valira asks at last, thinking of the way Terry's whole self seems to smile whenever he says the words “my wife.”

Kithri snorts. “If you can call five years new. He's just like that, and she only pretends not to be.” She gives Valira an assessing look. “But they're both sensible sorts, and they know others. You could do worse than having them as allies.”

Valira looks up from her plate, startled at the echo of her own words to Haoti. “And you?” she asks, instead of denying that she's going to need any. “Are you a valuable ally?”

“I'm just a cook,” Kithri says, such a bald-faced lie that it's hardly a lie at all. “Finish your breakfast, young one. It's going to be a long day and I can't wait forever.”

*

Terry leads Valira through palace corridors that don't seem at all familiar. She's only ever been a guest in them, and Tyne is an older country than the Greenwoods, with an older castle. The oldest part is little more than a museum now, where the public comes in to see life as it was in the days where kings and queens were the sole power. The newer part has two wings—the residence, where she's staying, and the government, where everything the king still does happens, and a good deal of other politics besides.

Haoti's office is something like a bridge between the two, and they stall outside it when voices seep through the heavy oak door.

“... security risk,” a vaguely familiar man's voice is saying. “Not to mention the press attention.” Valira winces, already knowing what the subject of their conversation must be. “The Greenwoods haven't called yet, but that's not to say they won't, and what are you going to say? She's not a symbol of alliance anymore.”

“She's a woman who needs my help, and by my calculations in common law she's a citizen of this country.” Haoti sounds exhausted, and also like he's standing right next to the door. Valira darts a sideways glance at Terry, but he's suddenly pretending that he can't hear or see anything at all, like the bodyguards she used to know. “If the Linnaeus family wants to control where she goes, what she does, who she sees, then they shouldn't have cast her out.”

“It's still bad for our alliance—”

“You've seen the papers this morning.” And Valira still hasn't. Once her phone was charged enough to look at, she didn't have the courage to look at anything important. “Tyne loves her. My first duty is to Tyne, and its citizens—including Valira Wayfinder—before the Greenwoods, or Theogonia, or anywhere else you want to worry about before they've even contacted us through official channels.”

Before she can talk herself out of it, Valira knocks on the door. There's only silence on the other side, because no one knocks on a king's office door while he's in a meeting with someone important, but she's the subject of discussion. She has a right. “I can pretend not to have heard this,” she says clearly through the door, “but I'd really prefer to come in, if I'm going to be discussed.”

There's a silence, and one of the bodyguards at the door—not Terry, who's still behind her, but one of the others—actually breaks his stone-faced vigil to look incredulous. A very important meeting, then.

Still, it's only a few seconds before the door swings open. She has a vague idea that kings shouldn't be opening their own doors, but that's stupid. Her father used to. “Please, come in,” says Haoti. He looks exhausted, and it's probably her fault. “You're right. You need to be part of this conversation.”

The other man in the room is Prime Minister Seath, which she should have expected. He's the kind of handsome that manages to be so bland that she can't place his face from one picture in the newspaper to the next, with the kind of face that could be any age from thirty to fifty for a human, or even older or younger, if he has any non-human blood in him. “Miss Wayfinder,” he says, and he's the first person since Solomon arrived in her life who's addressed her right, but it still puts her hackles up.

“My lady,” Haoti says, firm, another acceptable form of address but one that's much less resentful. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough. Thank you for your kind hospitality.” The words trip themselves across her tongue. She's not used to courtesy. “I haven't had time to look at the news this morning. You may have to catch me up.”

“You are, it seems, a returning heroine,” says Seath, and it's plain enough that he doesn't like her. He doesn't need to say it like that.

“Please, my lady, have a seat,” says Haoti, with faultless courtesy, and hands her a tablet. She looks down automatically, and someone must have been up all night to collate articles about her for him, but there they are. Tabloid articles saying he's been keeping her as his mistress since she was no longer useful as a wife, tabloid articles saying she's been quietly plotting a coup in the countryside, tabloid articles saying she's been living in poverty and distress, abandoned by all who knew her. And then the more moderate articles, simply saying she's been found, as though they weren't as eager with their questions.

People from town have been talking already. No one from the nursery, but the baker, the grocer, a farmer or two. They seem a little baffled, just saying she's quiet, keeps to herself, never let on that she's a princess. A few say she takes care of their plants and trees and animals when they're ill.

The last few articles are the beginnings of serious papers pretending they don't love gossip as much as they do, all speculating on what part she might play in politics to come, when the king's reign is still so young. _None_ , she wants to shout. _I would have lived in peace if you hadn't searched me out._ She looks up at Haoti and Seath instead. “I can't decide if the mistress theory is supposed to be romantic or scandalous.”

Haoti's mouth twitches like he might want to smile. Seath's eye twitches like he might want to slap her, and he's the one who answers. “It does no favors for his honor. Nor yours.” A pause, and then, gritted out: “My lady.”

The thorough collator of articles has added in press coverage about Valira for the past years, ever since her supposed disappearance from the University of Tyne at Hylene, where they'd found her and she'd run from them and from the lingering unhappiness of her family's control all at once. There seems to be a spike of them every once in a while—sometimes on her birthday, sometimes when the Greenwoods is in the news, sometimes just when the press is bored and has nothing else to think over.

If she'd been smart, she would have gone to Norene or farther. Her face wouldn't have been in the papers. She wouldn't have been found. “Probably romantic,” she decides, mostly to spite Seath. She looks between them. “Don't they have more important things to report about? They were talking about that reform bill that's being announced, and now it's all about me.”

“Gossip, unfortunately, gets more attention than legitimate government.”

Valira hates politicians. Hates them. Haoti offers a tense smile in her direction. “The bill's still undergoing significant revision. No announcement, nothing else to discuss. I am sorry.”

She sighs, and resists the urge to rub her forehead. Seath isn't the kind of man to show weakness in front of, she knows that already. “What else do I need to know?”

“One of the more enterprising tabloid reporters recognized Agent Windrose when she picked you up last night, saw her in past footage of me. Won't be long till they connect that you're here.”

“Which is why we need to move her to a safe house and discuss with the Greenwoods what solutions we can find to the problem,” Seath cuts in, voice smooth.

Valira bristles, and Haoti frowns. “As I have told you three times this morning, the Greenwoods have nothing to do with any of this. And the safe house is up to her—to you, my lady. As I have also said.” He turns to Valira fully. “You'd have more peace. But the fastest way to get rid of the press is to talk to them. We can call them here, and whatever story you want to tell, we'll tell it.”

“The Greenwoods—”

“Are our allies. We have, I hope, passed the point in our history where the family squabbles of kings and queens can send us to war.” After a tense moment, Seath gives a brief nod to that, and Haoti nods in return. “I know this has thrown an unexpected complication into your week, Prime Minister, but this isn't her fault. None of it. I'll talk to her, and we'll handle palace matters the palace way. You keep working on the reform bill, and get it into a form that will actually pass, if you want my support.”

That gets him a stiff bow from Seath. “Your Majesty. I'll speak to you when you've finished dealing with this … situation. My lady. A pleasure.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Valira, and knows it sounds just as insincere as his own courtesies. Haoti says a few more polite things, and then Seath is out of the room, and it's just the two of them. Valira waits until she's almost certain that he won't be hovering right outside the door before she speaks again. “I thought politicians were supposed to be able to be personable and charming.”

Haoti sighs and sits down behind his desk. His father's desk, she thinks she recognizes it and wonders why he didn't redecorate, since the desk is too new to be an heirloom. “You caught him on a bad morning. And he can be ruthless in pursuit of a goal, and fears this might slow down his reforms.”

“What kind of reforms?” Valira picks the tablet up again. Whoever is putting the articles together is still sending them. The most recent one does indeed place her at the palace. “Not that it's my business.”

“It will be soon, one of my first orders of business is to get you an official Tynish ID card.”

Valira blinks at him. “I still have long-term resident paperwork, under my current legal name, even. My parents took care of all that paperwork when I was put here.”

“Yes, but you're more protected if you're one of my citizens. Unless you want to continue to be from the Greenwoods—”

“No, I … Tyne is home, these days.” Valira lets herself rub her temples, now that it's just the two of them. “I know I need to talk to the press. I just don't know what to say. They're going to ask about … everything.”

She looks up in time to catch Haoti's nod. “They are. But they may also remember that your disgrace happened when you were still legally a child, that your parents kicked you out, and that a little rash political speaking isn't much in the face of that.” He sighed. “I'll need some answers about Theogonia and the Greenwoods, since I'm not leaving you to the inevitable press conference alone, and we'll need some answers about our engagement.”

“There isn't one.”

Haoti nods towards the tablet. “Read the articles in more depth. In the eyes of the people, there is one. We need to tread carefully.”

Valira eyes the tablet, but even the headlines are enough to make her feel sick. “What do you recommend we do, then? What do you recommend _I_ do? Because I don't think hiding for another five years is going to work this time.”

“Nearly six,” he says, as though she doesn't know, and frowns, leaning back in his chair. “We talk to the press. I get you Tynish citizenship in your own right, on the off chance your family decides it's in their best interest to call you home as a citizen of the Greenwoods if not as their daughter.”

Valira shakes her head. “They don't want me. Not even if I'm going to cause public scandals—which I'm not. Not for them. I won't say anything bad about the Greenwoods.” She bites her lip. “I can't make promises about Theogonia.”

His mouth twitches again. “I wouldn't ask you to. Though I might beg for silence. They're not a very important alliance, but they do have ports for the northern trade and the best price on Astoran goods.” He spreads his hands. “Beyond that, I honestly don't know. It's what you want, not what I want. You were clear last time we spoke, and I respect that. You can go to a safehouse. You can stay here, as my honored cousin. Tyne will forgive me some elven quirks, to call you that. It's about what you want, knowing that what you want is peace and I can't give it to you right now.”

He's trying to be kind. Valira is overwhelmed by kindness this morning, it seems. “I don't know. I never thought about any of it,” she finally says. “I can just about see to the end of the hour, but not much more than that.”

“Then, for the time being—allow me to shelter you? I'll arrange to talk to the press tomorrow, and you can join or not join, as you please, and you can stay here until you have another plan.”

Valira clasps her hands in her lap. “I mean this in the most grateful way possible, but—you're talking like it's some kind of favor to you, for me to stay. You don't need to pretend that. I know when I'm a burden.”

“Whether you're a burden or a welcome guest or, I suppose, both, you'll stay here until you tell me where else you want to go.” He gets halfway to standing before he hesitates. “Did you have anything else to discuss with me? I suppose there are household arrangements, things you might want—”

“No, I—Phillippa Windrose and her husband are taking good care of me. And Kithri from the kitchens, too. And apparently there's a gardener they can introduce me to.” She hesitates. “Is Terry Agent Windrose too? He just gave his first name. I'm surprised a married couple is allowed on the same shift, anyway.”

“They're part of a fealty agreement, not traditional bodyguards, and they work so well together it would be a shame to separate them. They're acceptable to you? As security, I mean? I thought you would like them.”

Valira blinks, baffled. “I like them, and they seem competent. Thanks for thinking of me that far. Terry said that Phi's all but training to be your queen's chief of security, when you find one, and that I'm an important guest.”

“Well, that's true too.” He does stand up this time. “Enjoy your meeting with the gardener—Tranquility, I think. I know she's friends with all the people you mentioned. They're good allies to make.”

But they're not his allies. “I'm not here for alliances. I just want to go into the gardens.”

“You're welcome anywhere. If you want to leave, just tell Agent Windrose, either one of them, and they'll arrange more of a security detail to protect you from the press and any awkward questions, but otherwise you have the run of the place.” He clears his throat. “I have the reform bill to worry about, so you won't see me much, I'm afraid—maybe a meal sometimes, if you're willing? I haven't had company since the—since the coronation.”

Since the funeral, he means. “If you like. I'm not much for polite conversation, but if you want to hear about the blight I'm dealing with on an orange tree you'll hear all about it.”

“I miss Mother talking about the gardens, so that's not a threat. It's a promise I'll hold you to.” Valira stands up at last, and offers her hand, not sure what she wants his response to be. He just shakes it, no courtly gestures. “I'll send you a message when I can, and I hope you'll do the same, if you need anything. And you can decide what you want about a press conference. I'm just going to tell them that you're staying here because your privacy has been invaded elsewhere, that there's no plan for a wedding, and that you're a private citizen. Hopefully that will chastise them.”

“The press isn't easily chastised,” she says, but she manages something that she hopes looks like a sincere smile. “Thank you. I should say that.”

“You don't owe me thanks. But I appreciate them.”

Out in the corridor, Phi has arrived and is standing with Terry, the two of them having what looks like a serious conference. The bodyguard who hadn't given her an incredulous look is still standing there, stone-faced. The offended one was Seath's, then.

“There you are,” says Terry, and his smile looks easy and honest and might even be both. “Did you want to go find Quil? Or do you have business to take care of?”

Valira has been awake for less than two hours, but at the moment, what she wants most in the world is to shut herself on one side of a door with the rest of the world on the other side. That won't do her any good, though, and a garden sounds nearly as good as some quiet, so she smiles. “If Quil is willing to see me, and if I'm not interrupting, I'm happy to see her.” She bites her lip. “And if whichever of you is watching me doesn't mind being stuck out there for a while. I like gardens.”

They exchange a quick smile, and Phi is the one who answers. “We're both on shift, and we like the gardens too. I might be in and out, with meetings about security for you, but don't worry about us. Spending some time in the garden is a much better assignment than many.”

Valira decides she's going to trust that, at least for now.

*

Quil turns out to be a tiefling woman maybe a year or three younger than Valira, with a comforting amount of soil staining her knees and a constant buzzing around her from the dozen bees who always seem to accompany her. She smiles at the sight of Phi and Terry like it's a reflex to do so and only then seems to recognize Valira. “Oh, um—”

“My name is fine,” says Valira, starting to get used to circumventing that particular dance. “And your friends call you Quil and the king calls you Tranquility. Which do you prefer?”

That briefly gets her a wide-eyed look, but Phi or Terry must do something, standing behind Valira, because after a second she summons a smile. “Quil, please.”

“His Majesty is very formal sometimes,” says Terry. “He tried to call me Terrence once.” Valira can't help wrinkling her nose, and Terry laughs. “Yes, just so.”

Valira takes in a deep breath and looks around the part of the garden she's found herself in. They're not far from a greenhouse, but mostly they seem to be surrounded by herbs, fragrant and green and useful, and the scent alone settles her. “I don't want to interrupt you, Quil, though I might help you if you don't mind. And I might take some supplies later, too, I have some plants I brought from home because they needed extra tending.”

Quil finally seems to shake off some of the awkwardness. “That I'm happy to help you with. And you're welcome to help me. If you like.” She looks over at Phi and Terry, and Valira glances between them, catching a shorthand of eyebrow raises and wrinkled noses and head tilts that add up to a conversation that she has no part in.

Everyone seems to be talking about her more than to her right now, and Valira sighs at all of it and drops to her knees to start weeding the herb beds. “I'm helping,” she says unnecessarily. “Whenever you finish your conversation. The thyme needs thinning.”

There are a few seconds of silence while they either finish their conversation or feel guilty for having it in the first place, and then Quil is next to her. “Sorry,” she says. “This is a little unusual for me, that's all. Though it's nice to have Phi and Terry visit in the middle of the day.”

“And it's nice for us to get to visit you,” says Terry, just a bit softer than he speaks to Valira or Kithri, like maybe Quil needs extra gentling, or maybe just like they're better friends. She doesn't know him well enough to say. “And my apologies too, Valira. You have to admit that you're worthy of some conversation.”

Valira wants to say that she's not, but she's not a fool, even if sometimes she'd like to be. “I know. I just like to be involved in conversations about me when I can be.” She glances around. All three of them are looking guilty. Terry is shifting, abashed. Phi's the calmest. Quil is looking down at her own hands in the soil with her cheeks even redder than the rest of her, and Valira does like them all, Phi and Terry personally and Quil on principle, so she sighs. “I'm sorry too. I shouldn't be short with you, none of you have been anything but friendly.”

“Everyone hates being talked about for things out of their control,” Quil says, so firm it only makes things worse for a second, but then she keeps talking, sounding like she's smiling. “Oh, the bees like you too.”

Valira smiles briefly at the one that's landed on her arm. “I probably smell like interesting flowers, pollen from other places. She'll go back to her sisters with an interesting story or two. Do you always have an entourage, or did you bathe in sugar water this morning?”

Quil's smile gets a lot more real. “They like me. Always have. Who knows why?”

“It's because she's sweet,” says Phi, with the well-worn edge of a common joke, but it still makes Quil flush and duck her head. Valira glances between all three of them again: Quil and her blushes, Phi and Terry and their soft looks and obvious enthusiasm about being around her.

Not her business, especially if she doesn't know how far it's gone. If they're all only looking, it will embarrass them to say, and they seem friendly. She doesn't want to ruin anything with the friendliest people she's met so far. “How many hives do you have?” she asks instead.

Quil is happy to talk about bees, and herbs, and the plans already in progress for next year's planting, and how Valira can get the supplies she needs to take care of her plants and information about the beds in the private courtyard outside the room she's staying in, and Valira lets that easy conversation carry them through the next while. Phi and Terry aren't afraid to chime in, offering to have the supplies sent to Valira's room, which she decides is a necessary evil, and teasing Quil a bit when she gets more bees than usual resting on her for a few minutes and pulls a bottle of water out of her pocket and pours it into a shallow dish for them.

Phi wanders away occasionally to talk seriously into her radio, but otherwise royalty doesn't intrude, and it's a happy and calm afternoon before Quil dusts her palms off and says “That's my shift for the day. You're welcome any time, Valira.”

“So she can do your work and leave you to fret over your bees?” Terry teases, offering her a hand up and pulling her to her feet when she accepts. “My shift's just about up too, though Phi has a little longer. Are we still doing dinner tonight?”

Quil darts a quick look at Valira, and then at Phi, who's in the middle of one of her radio conversations. “I think so, unless there's some urgent business.”

“I'm not that urgent,” Valira says. “I should probably see if the king wants to eat with me.” She looks down at her clothes, which are perfectly fine for a night at home but maybe less so far eating with a monarch. “And get changed, if so.”

“Well, if we compare to such illustrious company, you're welcome to eat with us,” says Terry, just as Phi wanders back into the conversation. “Isn't she?”

Phi's smile is warm and, Valira thinks, probably genuine. “Of course you are.”

Valira raises an eyebrow and tries not to look too obviously between the three of them. “That's very kind, but I don't want to interrupt.”

“It's not interrupting, I'm there too,” Quil says, and the way Terry winces and Phi bites her lip says more than it doesn't about how that is going, and how far those two anyway would like it to go. “Do you have a phone? If we exchange numbers, we can figure out things like dinner, and if you want to come back to the garden, you can find me whenever I'm working. If you want to.”

“It's nice to have company,” says Valira, and finds it's true. She's been so solitary with it for the past few years, even working at a nursery, that she'd almost forgotten swearing at weeds with Alya and teaching her cousins which plants were weeds and which wanted in the palace gardens when she was young. “My phone's in my room charging, but give me yours, and I'll give you the number.”

Quil gives her a phone with a smile, and Valira puts her number in and sends her off with Terry, once Phi tells them they should go ahead. “Do you want me to talk to the king's security about dinner plans?” Phi asks when Valira starts them walking towards her room again. “And did you want those supplies?”

“I do want those supplies, and no, I'll just text him.” Phi opens her mouth, probably to say that it's no trouble, and Valira shakes her head. “I still want to feel as normal as I can. Unless it's more work for you.”

Phi frowns. “It's not. Let's find you someone to ask about those supplies.”

They do, and then Valira goes to her room, where she thinks about inviting Phi in, realizes she has to take a shower, and leaves her in the hall instead. Her phone is still plugged in, undisturbed, and it looks like whoever came in to clean didn't touch her plants either. Her phone is full of messages from co-workers and anyone else who has her number, though thankfully those people are few. No journalists seem to have it yet, anyway.

There's a message from Haoti, and she opens it. _I'm having dinner with the PM and some opposition leaders from parliament, and then a meeting with Solomon about tomorrow. You're welcome at either but I wouldn't blame you for having other plans._

 _I'll see you tomorrow, tired from gardening_ , she texts back without even considering it, and then takes a breath for courage and sends another message. _Let me know where to come for the press conference tomorrow. And who I can talk to about finding something to wear unless you want me to show up in gardening clothes, which is the only kind of clothes I have._

 _I'll see to it_ , he texts back almost immediately, probably meaning all of it. His next message is only a few seconds behind. _Conference at ten. Would you like to see me for breakfast at eight, or would you rather meet me there?_

_I'll meet you for breakfast. Good luck with dinner._

He doesn't text back right away, so Valira showers and changes into something clean, if no less shabby, and comes out of the bathroom just in time for a knock on the door. “Just me,” says Phi when she swings the door open. “I'm going off shift now, my relief is here.” She gestures at a stone-faced man who's taken up his position in the hallway. “Let him know if you need anything. Are you coming to dinner with Quil and Terry and me?”

Valira shakes her head and makes sure she's smiling. “You all put up with me very kindly all afternoon. I'll see you again soon.”

“We're not putting up with you,” Phi says, frowning, and then darts a glance at her security relief. She doesn't trust him as much as she might, then. That's good to know. Valira won't either. “But if you're with the king, I won't mind.”

“Go, enjoy your dinner,” Valira says, with the most sincere smile she can muster. “Tell Quil thank you again for letting me get in her way this afternoon.”

“She'll be asking when you plan to come help her next, believe me,” says Phi, and gives her a wave before turning to her relief with what seem to be a series of stern instructions. Valira shuts the door as gently as she can and waits until the conversation cuts off and she guesses that Phi is off to dinner.

“A tray of dinner when it can be managed, please,” she says when she opens the door again, and her new guard just nods, impassive, and gets on his radio.

*

There's a knock on Valira's door the next morning when she's just running a brush through her hair, and she opens it to find Phi on the other side, Terry just beyond her, taking up his post beside the door and yawning a little. “Someone arrived with clothes for the press conference, and I thought you'd rather not have someone fussing over the fit for twenty minutes,” she explains, holding out a bag. “They'll have snooped around enough to know what will fit you by now, and it shouldn't be too awful.”

“It's for a press conference, of course it's going to be awful,” says Valira, and winces.

Terry laughs, and Phi's mouth twitches. “I can't say I disagree. I have it on the schedule that you're having breakfast with the king?”

“Yes, we arranged it last night.” Phi's look is sharp enough that she must guess that Valira ate off a tray in her room, alone, while reading too much press coverage on her phone, stomach tying itself up in knots over the fact that her parents still haven't commented on the situation. Or at least the first part of that. “I figured he might have something to say about how things are going to work today.”

“Well, I'll leave you to change.” Phi hesitates. “I know you're having breakfast elsewhere, but I did take the liberty of asking the kitchen for hot water for you. I thought you might want one of your own teas before going out into the world.”

Valira blinks, and smiles. “That's wonderful, and very kind. It's centering, to have something of my own.”

“Let us know how we can help with that,” says Terry, serious, and she nods at him before shutting the door.

The clothes aren't as awful as she might have feared. She knows what a princess or a queen's usual uniform is, and has little interest in it, so the slacks and the soft green sweater are a relief, and the shoes that don't pinch her feet but aren't stained with soil either. By the time she opens the door again, there's a tray with a pitcher of hot water, a mug, and all the other accoutrements of tea but the tea itself waiting in front of the door.

“Looks good,” says Phi, after a brief look at her.

Valira looks between them. “Come in while I drink my tea, if you like. I think there are still a few minutes before I have to go anywhere.”

Phi's brows pinch a little, but Terry smiles and nods, so Valira gestures them in. They come through the door, and Phi shuts it after herself and sighs. “I suppose I should have said yesterday—you might not want to show that you're partial to us, if you are. We're not popular with the Prime Minister and his people, as a general rule.”

Valira frowns, puzzled. “Why not?”

“Because we're on a fealty arrangement, and answer directly to the king, and not the taxpayers that pay for most of the rest of security. We're old fashioned, and not under Seath's control,” says Terry, and when Phi just frowns more at him, he shakes his head. “I'm not going to tiptoe around, even if we are on duty. He was quite happy running things while the king rode his horses and saw his women and made the occasional diplomatic appearance. King Haoti has ambitions of actually governing.”

“Ah. No wonder he doesn't like me,” says Valira, and rubs her forehead before starting her tea steeping. “This is exactly what I didn't want. But I'm not going to ignore the two of you because he doesn't like you. Not unless you're worried about reprisal.”

“Not at all,” Phi says, quick and comforting. “We just want to be sure that you have whatever information you need.”

“I'll be careful with him, but I'm not expecting to stay very long, in the end.”

“I'm sure he'll like that,” Terry says, just neutral enough to make Valira wince, and changes the subject to her plans for after the press conference, as though she won't want to shut herself in her room and pretend she's home for the rest of the day.

She's glad they trust her enough to warn her, but the conversation makes her uneasy enough to set off the soothing taste of the tea, and she's feeling more nervous than calm by the time it's time to leave to have breakfast with Haoti.

*

Solomon is in the dining room when she's shown in, and Valira almost walks right back out again. He's halfway out of his chair, though, and she pauses in the doorway. “I was just leaving,” he says, with a deep nod that's almost but not quite a bow. “My apologies for our first meeting, your Highness.” Haoti, sitting at the head of the table in a severe suit, holding a cup of coffee, clears his throat. “My lady,” he corrects himself.

Valira doesn't know how to say she forgives him when she irrationally blames everything that's happened on him. “Apology appreciated,” she finally says, and sits down at the place across the table from Haoti. There are flapjacks set out, as well as some other things, and when Solomon's abrupt and awkward departure leaves silence in its wake, she gestures at the brown pot of honey set out next to the flapjacks. “Is that from Quil's bees?”

“Yes. We grow as much of our food as we can in the palace, and buy what we can't from farms nearby, unless it's exotic.” Haoti dishes a few flapjacks onto his plate. “I'm sorry I left you alone for dinner last night. Unless you had other company, I suppose.”

“Other company was offered, but I was tired, and a tray in my room was about what I had the energy for.” Valira follows his example, and takes some eggs as well. “Tell me about the press conference.”

Haoti nods. “I'll tell everyone that you're living as a private citizen and are in the process of becoming a naturalized one, all fair and legal, and that you should be legally and correctly referred to as Valira Wayfinder, with the courtesy title of 'Lady,' since they'll need something. And then of course that you're staying here after your privacy was so grievously invaded and that you ask for privacy, which is all you've wanted for the past several years. We have nothing to say on the subject of the Greenwoods or Theogonia. Then they'll ask questions about all the things I just told them not to ask, mostly about our plans to marry.”

“You'll say we don't have any?”

“Yes, but they won't believe it. Solomon thinks we need to take at least a few questions on the subject, though, so I won't forbid it as a topic.” He must see the face she makes that she can't control, because he shrugs. “He's an expert in public relations and my cousin. I have to listen to him.”

“You're the king. You don't really have to listen to anyone.”

Haoti frowns. “I wish it were that simple.” He takes a few bites of his breakfast and pins her with a look. “Do you want to say anything?” Valira stares at him, and he winces. “I know you don't. But is there anything you'd like to be said? If you just want to stand there and prove you're alive and well and not frightened, you're more than welcome to, but if there's anything you want to say, I'll let you have the podium.”

Valira should speak, and she knows it. If she's just a silent presence at the press conference, much will be made of that. It doesn't mean she has anything to say. “I'll try to answer some questions, but I don't have anything to say before the questions that won't sound better coming from you.”

“Okay.” He nods, accepting it, and she relaxes enough to take a few bites of her flapjacks and honey. She can taste the clover in it, strong and sweet, and concentrates on that for as long as she can. “We should talk about questions they're likely to ask,” he says at last.

“Whether we're getting married. The answer to that one is no. Whether I'm going home. Also no. What my parents' response to my return is, which is ...”

“Still no word,” Haoti says, kind enough to pretend she was waiting for him to fill in the information instead of just stopping with no ability to finish the sentence. “I'd recommend you say that you wish the Greenwoods the best but aren't currently in contact with them over the situation. They'll ask your plans.”

“To live in peace and work with plants. Or animals, I'm good with those too, but none of the farms were hiring and the nursery was.” He winces, and she rolls her eyes and eats another bite. “Yes, I know I can't say that. Can I tell them that I can't plan my future until issues of privacy and security and citizenship are dealt with?”

“You can, as long as you're prepared to be asked what you want to do after that.” He sighs. “They'll also be nosy about what you've been doing, why you left university, why you're in Tyne, all that kind of thing. Have answers ready.”

She needs, it seems, to have answers to everything ready, even though the press won't listen, will just pry and pry and pry. All the more because they know she likes her privacy. “How do you stand all of it? They follow you around, pounced on it every time you got a little drunk at a bar, or took a woman on a date, can't seem to decide whether you concentrating on your work is disappointing or praiseworthy … I would have run screaming by now.”

“You did,” he points out. “Well, I don't know about the screaming.” That startles her into a laugh, and he looks pleased while he eats a few more bites. “I let them see some things, so they assume others. If I like parties and drinking and women, they ignore everything else. If you give them just enough, they'll leave you be for everything else.”

Valira sighs and pours some tea that's not as good as what she had before breakfast with him. “The problem is that I don't want them to have anything.”

“I don't blame you, but you're going to need to figure something out,” he warns, and changes the subject to her time in the garden yesterday and if she needs anything for her plants.

*

“Lady Valira,” says one of the reporters once Haoti is finished giving all of their official statements to a room packed full of press both serious and frothy. “The Greenwoods has been publicly silent on the subject of your return. Do you have any insight to offer us?”

Haoti shoots her a lightning-quick glance. It still makes a few camera shutters click. “As a private citizen, I can't comment on the Greenwoods,” she says once she's pulled herself together, and then adds what Haoti said. “I wish the people and my family all the best, but we haven't been in contact on the issue.”

“Why is that?” shouts someone from the back. “Are you still estranged after your comments on Theogonia? Do you plan a reunion?”

“That's their decision to make, and again, I can't comment on it.”

“As a private citizen,” one of the more serious-looking reporters near the front asks, “do you still plan to honor the informal betrothal contract with King Haoti?”

Valira shakes her head. “As he made clear, neither of us feels that is necessary at the moment. He's kindly assisting me as a friend and as the head of the government of the country where I'm becoming a citizen, but that's it.”

“And when you are a citizen?”

“Obviously her situation is different than that of the average private citizen, as much as she wants to be one,” Haoti says before Valira can scrape together an answer. “I'm happy to keep hosting her until she tells me otherwise, and anything I can do to encourage her talents in the garden is my honor to do, while she's my guest.”

“Do you plan to bring her to visit Queen Aredhel, if they have a shared interest in gardening?” one of the more gossipy ones asks.

It's not a bad question as far as Valira goes, but Haoti goes pale, so Valira jumps in to answer for him. “We don't have plans for it at the moment, though I'd of course be happy to see her Majesty again, and see the gardens at her current home. But the security and privacy issues surrounding me at the moment mean that I don't want to bother her.”

That makes a few of the better ones squirm, she's pleased to see, and Solomon, who's been standing off to the side, steps forward. “Everyone has business to take care of, how about three more questions for them and then I'll answer anything that remains.”

Valira hates being grateful to him when this is all, somehow, his fault, but she is grateful, and can even grit her teeth and politely answer the questions about how she thinks her cousin Rowan is doing as the heir, and how she thinks Finch is doing stepping up as _his_ heir, in Valira's absence. The gossip questions are almost a relief, in the face of that.

When the three questions are up, Haoti and their security teams move immediately, and Valira finds herself ushered out of the room, Terry and Phi falling into step behind her until Haoti stops a little way up a hallway, where the sound of shouted questions has faded somewhat. “All well?” he asks.

“As well as can be expected. I hope the Greenwoods puts out a statement soon, so we know how they'd like us to deal with everything. I don't know how disgraced I am, publicly, they've been avoiding the subject of me for so long. They won't like being pinned down.”

“No, they don't seem to like that at all,” Haoti muses, and she glares at him, because it's true, but their firm and complete neutrality is the only reason they're still a country at all, and the only reason they managed to become one in the first place. “My people will talk to theirs, and we'll get them to say something. Even a 'no comment' is an answer, on something like this.”

“I suppose so.”

One of Haoti's assistants taps him on the shoulder and whispers briefly in his ear. He makes a face. “Duty calls. I'd offer another meal today, but I think I'll be wrapped up in business. Are you fine on your own?”

“Always,” Valira says, and Phi shifts in the corner of her eye.

Haoti doesn't look happy, but he also starts walking again. “I can make a habit of breakfasts, though, if you like. It was always a family meal when Mother was living in the palace, and I'd like to reinstate the tradition.”

She has no idea what they'll say to each other over a breakfast without a press conference giving them something to talk about, but she nods anyway. “Breakfasts I can do. I'm an early riser, so it's no trouble.”

“Yes, but—no, never mind. Thank you, Valira, I'll plan on seeing you tomorrow morning.”

And with that, he's off down the hall, his entourage with him, and Valira is left with Phi and Terry, and turns around to see them. “Garden again?” Terry asks, and he's smiling, but there's an edge to it. “I think we could all use some sunshine, and Quil's working in one of the greenhouses today, she told us last night so we'd know where to find her.”

“And then, unless you have other plans, you can have dinner with us tonight,” Phis says, firm. “Kithri is coming too. I think you could use the cheer.”

Valira wants to object to being pitied, but mostly she just finds herself grateful. “Yes, fine,” she says. “Just let me get changed and then we can go out to the gardens.”

*

“That man is a dick and you shouldn't pay attention to the news,” Kithri says, full of wrath, when she comes into Phi and Terry's suite that night with a cart that seems to contain dinner, including pie. Valira has decided not to ask about the pie.

It takes her a moment to realize that Kithri is talking to her. “Has someone written something awful about me? I didn't think we gave them much to go on.”

“Yondalla bless him, but the Prime Minister is a—”

“Very important man,” Terry finishes smoothly, setting food out on their table. Their suite is small and plain, but it's in the residence, and Valira likes it. Apparently it's part of the fealty agreement, something about Phi's home at Fairpoint Hold, on the northeast border, and Valira hasn't figured out much more than that, other than there being apparently innumerable brothers at the hold. “What did he say?”

“Oh, he just hopes you won't be distracting to the king or the people at such an important time in politics, and as a private citizen, any marked attention ...” Kithri shakes her head, lips thing. “Well. Anyone who can read knows he's only pretending to be polite. You don't pay any attention to him.”

Valira groans. “I don't know why he hates me, but it's mutual.”

“He hates anyone who gets between him and the king. He and King Haoti's father were the best of friends.”

“King Haoti doesn't seem to agree with him on everything,” Quil offers, which is lukewarm but at least somewhat encouraging.

Valira looks around at them, the four of them in easy concert, getting dinner on the table. “Do you like him?” she asks. “Not as … whatever I am, none of this is going to get back to him. But I want to know.”

They all exchange looks, and Valira sits there patiently and tries not to be annoyed that they're talking around her. She expects Kithri to break first, with an impassioned answer one way or the other, but it's Phi who speaks up, and Valira doesn't know what it means that she's the one doing it when two days of acquaintance has already made her guess that Phi is the most circumspect of all of them. “It's hard to know whether we like him or not,” she says. “He's always polite, which is more than I could sometimes say for his father, but he's not more than polite, either.”

“Says thank you for my pie when he gets it,” Kithri contributes, and she sounds grudging, but it still seems to be a genuine compliment.

“He doesn't talk to many people,” Terry says, maybe seeing how frustrating that answer is. “And not to us, though I don't think he's being a snob, to be fair to him. If he's not cloistered with Seath or someone else from the government, he's … I don't even know. Cloistered in his room or his office with paperwork. But always cloistered somewhere. It's easier than guarding him at clubs, but going from a lot of that to none at all can't be easy on him.”

Valira thinks of him as good as saying that it was an image that was easy to project to keep the press away from anything else he might care about, but she's not going to betray his confidence like that. “So you don't, but you don't dislike him either.”

“I think he's lonely,” Quil says, and bites her lip like maybe she shouldn't have said it. Everyone is looking at her, and she shrugs, a little awkward. “I do. I see him in the garden sometimes—did when he was still a prince, even, and the older gardeners say he used to help his mother when she still lived here, but he'll pull a weed or two and otherwise not talk to anyone, really.”

“Don't look at us,” Phi says when Valira looks at her and Terry automatically. They've been on his security team, so they could confirm. “I think I've seen walks in the garden on shift change reports, but he hasn't gone while I've been on shift for him.”

“I went with him once,” says Terry. “Didn't realize it was a habit, but it makes sense. He knew his way around, called a gardener over to talk about a plant that wasn't doing well.”

That's more of a relief than Valira cares to say. If he likes the gardens, if he works in them even to the extent of discussing a plant's health, then there's something in him more than there was when they were children and he only ever antagonized her. “Okay.” None of them is going to ask her any questions, but she can volunteer information. “I'd like to like him. He's being kind, and it's going to be lonely here for me if there's nothing more than that.”

As though the last few years haven't been lonely, and all four of them glance away in a way that makes her wonder just what kind of gossip is passing around about her. “Well, you don't have to be lonely with us around,” says Kithri, brisk. “You seem a sensible type.”

Valira can't help smiling at that, thinking of Alya, and her despairing amusement over Valira's tendency to jump first and think later. Then again, no one's known her well enough to know that since Alya died, and she's been cautious these past few days. “I try,” she says, knowing it's mostly a lie.

Maybe they even know it. Quil laughs a little, and Kithri rolls her eyes, and Terry and Phi exchange a look before Phi leans forward. “Unless you have more questions, why don't we tell you about some things that are close by? We're happy to escort you to the garden every day, but in case you ever want to go anywhere else, we can give you some choices.”

Valira smiles, relieved that the end of her questions doesn't mean the start of theirs, even if her question wasn't really answered. “Please,” she says. “It's been years since I was here, and then I was a kid and not allowed to do anything fun.”

By the end of dinner, Valira's head is spinning with more lively company than she's had since her cousins, but she's still, somehow, smiling about it.

*

“I wonder,” Haoti says over breakfast the next morning, and stops.

As Valira might have guessed, they've run out of conversation now that they don't have a press conference to discuss, and after some vague courtesies, they've both been staring at the window while they eat. His words startle her into putting down her fork. “You wonder,” she prompts.

“If you want to get out of the palace—not that you aren't welcome to whenever you want, your security team can handle that—I'm going out tomorrow. There's an animal refuge not far from here that I like to visit, when I have the time, and it seems like something you might enjoy.”

“It really is,” she says, a little startled but mostly grateful. “How did you get involved in it?”

“Went to university with one of the proprietors, actually. He's a little abrasive, but he takes good care of the animals, which is what matters to me and undoubtedly to you.”

Valira nods a few times more than dignity should allow, but then again, she's never cared that much about dignity. “Yes, definitely. If my schedule weren't already clear, I'd clear it. Do you volunteer? Is it just a visit?”

“My father got twitchy when I called it volunteering, since princes aren't supposed to shovel manure, but yes.” There's a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Manure included, just to warn you.”

“If you knew the amount of manure I've dealt with over the past several years, you wouldn't feel the need to warn me,” she assures him, and the smile comes out a little more. “Yes. Please. I'd love to get out and see animals, I only had stray cats at home, after Alya's rabbit died.”

“I'll make sure it's arranged, then.” He hesitates, smile falling off his face. “Is there anything I can do to make things less strange for you here? I know your whole life was uprooted, and the press is still in a frenzy, which isn't helped by your family not—well, the situation is what it is. But if I can help, I want to.”

There are a hundred things Valira wants, but they're all stupid or not fair to ask him. She can't really have a job working alongside Quil and the few other gardeners who have dared introduce themselves to her, not with the way things are. She can't really go back home and be forgotten about. “You've already done enough,” she says, which is as honest as she can be. “Anything else, figuring out what comes next … I appreciate the offer, but that has to be me. Even if I don't know what to do yet. You're busy enough with whatever this bill is, and still getting used to being king.”

“I hope that after a year, I have at least some idea,” he says, a little wry. “But I understand. I'll still be here if you want my help, but do whatever you need to do.”

Valira taps her fork against the table, thinking a little. “And you can ask me for help if you want it too. You're doing me a favor, and even if you weren't, well. If there's something I can do, even if it's repotting a plant, I'll help if I can.”

“I'll keep it in mind. In the meantime, all I ask is your company at the refuge tomorrow, and breakfast any morning you're free.” He frowns. “And there are always events, meetings with diplomats and members of my own government, Seath and others. You'd be welcome at any of those, if they don't sound horrible.”

They do, but if he wants her there, she'll grit her teeth and get through it. “I'll do my best to keep my calendar clear as long as I'm here.”

He frowns a little, then smiles, getting the joke, as poor as it was. “I'll make sure to give you plenty of notice.”

*

It rains that afternoon, just a shower, but enough to drive almost everyone indoors, so Valira ends up in a greenhouse with Quil, Phi and Terry at their heels as usual, fussing over some seedlings that aren't rooting as well as they should.

“They already look happier,” Quil observes, looking over from her own tray of seedlings, which need to be thinned and put in slightly larger containers.

Valira shrugs and goes back to digging through the potting soil. “Green things like me. They always have. It's a druid talent, and Alya trained it up a little with me.” She purses her lips. “You need worms.”

“In the seedlings?” Quil asks, eyebrows up, and reverts to the subject. “I wondered if you might be a magic user. I'm a bit of one.”

“More than a bit,” Terry says, so fond Valira would be frowning at him if his wife weren't smiling indulgently only a few feet away.

Quil is blushing, and Valira still isn't sure what's going on, but increasingly it looks like it's a delicate but ultimately happy situation, fondness on all sides and the cautiousness that comes with fondness sometimes, like a gardener sheltering a plant too tender to survive a late frost, strawberries not yet ripe. Mentioning it seems like it would break the spell, though, so she just raises her eyebrows politely. “What kind of magic?”

“Mostly it slips my grasp. Or makes fire. Not around the plants,” Quil adds hastily, maybe seeing the alarm Valira can't quite keep back. “It's mostly calm around the plants, and especially around the bees. But I know a few useful spells these days. Trial and error.”

Valira shrugs. “That's how magic works, for those of us without the right teachers, or with the right teachers but no chance to prove ourselves. But if mine helps me make the plants a little happier, it's use enough for me.” Quil looks troubled, and Valira didn't mean for that. “And if your magic likes to burn,” she adds, testing out the words, “then that's a part of nature too. It leaves room for new growth. Ask a blueberry farmer someday.”

Quil doesn't answer directly, but Phi and Terry are smiling like Valira said something right, so she decides to leave it there, and let Quil think it over on her own. “Why do you think the seedlings need worms?” she finally asks, and if her voice is a little rough, none of them are going to mention it. “If they won't take root, a worm is just going to knock what few roots they have loose.”

“And give them room to grow,” Valira points out, and she and Quil argue without barbs about it for the next twenty minutes, until Valira is done using nutrients and magic both to save the tray of seedlings that will, in a few months, provide vegetables to the palace.

Greenhouse work is even more repetitive than most gardening, but it's meditative, and no one interrupts the four of them in their corner, other than Phi and Terry occasionally wandering away to make sure they're not being watched, or to discuss Valira's status on the radio, even if her status is just “dirty.”

When Quil's shift is over, she washes her hands from a hose and then leads the way out into the rain, turning her face up to it to enjoy it for a moment, since it's warm and light.

Behind her, Quil is complaining a little about the wet, and Valira twists to tease her over it and finds Terry holding a discarded plant pot over her head like it might shield her from the rain, and Phi smiling at them both like her heart is overflowing.

There's a nest of emotions in Valira's chest that she wouldn't care to tell anyone she liked about, all envy and loneliness and resentment at the simple fact that they all seem to know what to do, behind all their caution. Still, when Quil looks at her, somewhere between guilty and pleased, Valira makes sure her smile is as real as she can make it. “It's a nice rain,” she says reprovingly, and Quil grins, any worry passing right away. “What kind of gardener are you?”

“The kind with an affinity for fire,” Quil complains, but she disentangles herself from Terry and comes up next to Valira, to walk with her as they go inside, and that's more than Valira could have asked for.

*

Valira and Haoti leave for the animal refuge after a quick and quiet breakfast, escorted by his security team, more of them than usual since he's off the palace grounds. Phi and Terry, with apologies, are off for the day, taking a trip to the northeastern border and their home and Phi's many siblings. Quil spoke of the siblings like they're familiar, when the trip came out, and that's another piece in the puzzle Valira is making the three of them into, but Quil isn't going with them this time, no break in her schedule to make it possible.

“Still no word from your family,” Haoti says abruptly a few minutes into their ride, sitting together fidgeting in the back of a car while his security team ignores them in the stoic way she hates.

“They'd say they aren't my family, so I'm not shocked,” she says, instantly weary, and leans her head against the window. It's tinted and mirrored on the outside, so she can see little of the scenery.

Haoti's frown is sudden, deep, and quickly controlled. “I don't understand how they can decide that, just from some less-than-judicious but true comments when you were still a minor. I know the Greenwoods believe in neutrality, but surely family is important.”

“Of course it is. They were protecting the family. I shouldn't have let myself be angry, and I didn't protect the family, so they took my actions as a hint that I didn't want to be part of it anymore.”

“You'll forgive me,” he says after a few heavy seconds of silence, “if I call that bullshit.”

Valira shrugs, helpless. It's not as though she hasn't chased the argument around enough, in the past years. “And what can I do? What does it matter? They believe it.”

“Please tell me that you don't.”

Valira sighs. “Don't go poking at bruises. I don't poke at yours.”

“Of course,” he says, after another silence. “My apologies, my lady.” He's gone right back to stiff and polite, and she's struck with an urge to apologize, for stopping him reaching out, but she can't do this today. Maybe not ever.

Conversation dies after that, but they're lucky. The refuge is less than an hour away, and Haoti takes care of business on a tablet while Valira wanders through the news on her phone. It's still mostly about her, until she looks into international news, and then she can lose herself in an in-depth piece on crop failures on the Sword Coast and whether it means a nearby volcano is ready to blow.

Eventually, they turn onto a country road and into an area of fenced forest with a big farmhouse and several barns at the end of a long dirt driveway. Haoti puts his tablet away as soon as they turn into the driveway, and he seems to lighten the closer they get to the house, until they're stopping and security is letting them out of the car and he's actually smiling, genuine and pleased.

Two men come out of one of the barns almost as soon as they're out of the car, striding along as a pair, in step despite the disparity in their heights, in no hurry but also eager to see their guest. They prove, as they get closer, to be a drow and a duergar, both wearing hats against the dim sun that's trying to force its way through yesterday's clouds, and they hail Haoti in what Valira thinks she recognizes as Undercommon.

There's a rapid exchange of greetings, Haoti clasping their hands in turn as soon as they're close enough, and then he turns to Valira. “My lady, the friends I told you about. Kalon Bel,” with a nod to the drow, “and Frog.”

“Frog?” she asks, the word slipping out before she can help it.

Frog snorts. “Surface-dwellers can't say the full name, so Frog will do,” he says, his Common heavily accented but well-practiced. “And you're the one he was supposed to marry.” A sly look between them. “Good job escaping.”

“Kalon, Frog, this is Valira, who I am not engaged to,” says Haoti, and there's a well-worn air to it. “She's a druid, and I thought she'd like the animals, and a break from the palace to do some volunteering. As would I.”

Kalon extends a hand, and she shakes it. “A pleasure,” he says, slow and thoughtful enough that she's not sure he's being honest, and then he smiles. It's thin, even more unpracticed than Haoti's, but it's a smile nonetheless. “Come on, then. We'll give you the tour, and then we'll take you at Haoti's word and put you to work.”

“Work is exactly what I want,” she says, firm. “Do you mind if I talk to them? I can, when I have the spare magic, and I do this morning.”

“You're more than welcome to,” he assures her, and walks off, expecting them all to follow behind, none of the courtesies she's still uncomfortable with.

Their refuge, called Lost Flame, which seems to be some kind of joke she's not in on, isn't large, but it's eclectic, she can tell from the very first barn. There are injured birds of prey being rehabilitated, a few magical birds, and what seems to be a duck sitting on a basilisk egg, and Kalon and Frog talk about all of them like they're old friends.

Other barns have cows, a corner full of giant spiders spinning webs, and other creatures, all entirely content and interested in visitors.

“You'll like the outside the best,” Frog predicts when they've been through the barns, and leads her outside and through the fence, the security team twitching behind them and Haoti and Kalon bringing up the rear, their heads bent together as they discuss a cockatrice that's been a long-term patient and might be ready to be readied for the wild. “First, the rats.”

Once they're out in a field that's more of a clearing, his meaning becomes clear—four rats each the size of a wolfhound, who come when Kalon lets out a piercing whistle and seem very interested in the company. Valira smiles at the sight and calls on her magic, listens and listens to their bass squeaks until she can understand them, and reply. “Hello there,” she says to the one nearest her.

“Oh!” it says, startled, and turns to its friends. “This one speaks sense!”

“How long have you been here?” she asks, offering a basket of vegetables when Kalon produces one as if by magic and watching them rummage through it.

They confer about it for a few seconds, too fast for her to catch. “Two summers,” says one of the other ones. “The city was too crowded, and the head of the colony sent us here so we wouldn't be killed.” It nods at Haoti, as much as a rat can nod at anything. “That one.”

Valira blinks over her shoulder at Haoti, who doesn't seem the sort to save rats, much less giant ones who must have caused a panic in the city and, judging from the timing, must have pissed his father off. “Did you?” she asks, remembering to shape her words for humanoid ears.

He tilts his head, bemused. “Did I what? I can't understand you.”

“Save them. Get them out of the city.” Two summers ago, he wouldn't have been the head of the colony, not really. His father was alive, and can't have been too happy about leaving giant rats alive.

“Oh. Kalon and Frog had just started the refuge, so it was convenient.” He smiles at the rats. “I'm amazed they remember. Thank them for me.”

The rats won't understand thanks, not like that, but Valira turns her attention back to them anyway. “He's grateful that you remember him,” she says.

The collective consensus seems to be that that's only right and proper, but “It wasn't quite as good as staying in our home, where there was all that interesting trash to go through, but we would have been killed, so we're also grateful,” says the first one, so they're being gracious. “Especially when he comes to see us and sometimes brings food.”

“I don't think we brought any this time, but maybe next time.” She glances back at Haoti, and makes sure she's speaking Common. “They thank you too, and they'd be more grateful if it so happens that we brought food for them. I'm assuming the unhealthy kind.”

“You didn't,” Frog says, all threatening cheer, “because we told him the last time that if he brings fried food to the rats again we were going to bar him from our establishment.”

Over his head, Haoti mouths _In the car_ , and Valira swallows her smile and turns to the rats again. “He'll have to bring it to you secretly. Your keepers think it's not good for you. They're probably right,” she adds, to be fair. “Tell me about your lives here, if you like.”

They do like, apparently, because as long as her magic lasts, they all talk over each other, telling her that they'd appreciate more chance for adventures but do enjoy not being screamed at whenever someone sees them, and that the sheep are interesting, when they aren't threatening to eat them. That's when the magic runs out, Valira catching it unraveling just fast enough to warn them and thank them, so she's left to seek out Haoti and Frog and Kalon, who have gone back to one of the barns and started changing hay in some empty stalls.

“What do they mean, that sheep threaten to eat them?” she asks, baffled. “Or do they mean that sheep are boring when they worry that they're going to be eaten? I couldn't make anything of that part of the conversation.”

Kalon grins. “We've been waiting to go see the sheep until you were done. Do you have the magic for another round of that spell? You'd find it an interesting conversation, I'm pretty sure.”

A look at Frog and Haoti proves that they're all just as pleased to show her what comes next, so she looks inside herself, at her reserves of magic. “I can cast it another time or two, I'd say. Maybe even three, if I try hard enough. Show me these sheep.”

The sheep, it seems, are held in a fenced pasture on the other side of the refuge from everything else, and at first, from a distance, it just looks like a flock of about fifty sheep, most of them the kind with black faces and white wool, but when she gets closer, she can see the unmistakable shapes of bones on the ground, and even closer than that she can see something subtly wrong about their faces, the length of the noses and the set of the eyes.

“Oh, hello,” she says, and one of them chuckles. Probably Frog. She likes him.

“An Underdark breed,” says Kalon when they get to the fence. The sheep look over at them, seem to realize that they aren't carrying food, and go back to their disinterest. “They were a flock down in Mezzon, if you've heard of the city, but they weren't being well-treated. They're the reason we opened the refuge, in fact, and they provide most of the income for the refuge, too. Silk wool.”

“They eat meat,” says Haoti, maybe seeing that she hasn't realized yet, and then it makes sense, the predator shapes of their skulls, the way the ground of their pasture is torn up from sharp hooves. “We might get to see feeding time later.”

Valira grins at him, and then at Kalon and Frog, and then at the sheep. “They won't eat me, will they?”

“Probably not,” says Frog, with a shrug of unconcern, and that's good enough for Valira, though it's not good enough for their bodyguards, one of whom makes an unhappy noise that cuts off when she hops over the fence, already casting the magic to speak to them.

The sheep nearest her gives her an unimpressed look and turns to one of her fellows. “Is this one food?”

“I'm not,” she says, and that gets a few of them looking at her. “Well, perhaps someday, but at the moment I'd prefer to be friends, and frankly, I'm not likely to have the nutrients you need to survive. You must need spiders or silkworms, to help with your coats, and then whatever meat is nearby. Which could mean me, I suppose. But your keepers would be unhappy.”

They eye her, and it's collectively decided that she's boring meat.

“Not being eaten?” Haoti asks from the other side of the fence, and she turns around to beam at him. “I got a few nips when Kalon introduced me the first time, though none of it scarred.”

“I'm not very interesting meat, I'm informed.” She looks at Kalon and Frog. “Are they a common breed in the Underdark?”

“Only in Mezzon,” says Kalon. “They were an arcane experiment centuries ago, and it worked out well enough for them to persist. These ones have adapted well to the sunshine.”

“Do you like it in the sunlight?” she asks the sheep.

One of the ones in the middle, deferred to enough that she must be one of the leaders of the flock, answers that question. “Sometimes it's too warm, but there's more variety to the meat. Though we don't get enough fish.”

She sounds aggrieved enough about that to make Valira laugh and turn back to the fence. “Apparently you don't feed them enough fish.”

“If they want more fish, they need to grow wool faster for us to sell,” says Frog, “but we'll keep it in mind. I'm going to get some food for them.”

Valira chats with them all through feeding, which is predictably gory and during which she moves to sit on the fence, and renews her spell twice to keep asking them questions before she runs out of magic. They're not nearly as friendly as the rats, but they're fascinating, with their experience of a life she couldn't imagine.

“If I could, I would take them home with me,” she says, climbing over the fence. “They could eat the journalists. And probably most of the local songbirds.”

“I think my groundskeepers might object,” says Haoti, with a smile that fades as soon as she turns a surprised look on him.

“Oh, you thought—” She stops, knowing it's kinder to not finish that sentence. “That too.”

“And your feral cat population would also take a hit,” he says, and it's a tease kindly meant, but it's still awkward, and judging from the averted eyes from the bodyguards and Kalon and Frog edging away, everyone knows it. “Besides, I don't think you could convince these two to part with them.”

“One tried to eat my leg when we were in the middle of rescuing them,” Frog says. “Now, if you're done talking to the animals, I think you two promised to volunteer.”

Valira smiles at him, relieved. “Yes. Hand me a shovel. I'm assuming this involves manure.”

One of the bodyguards makes a quiet, horrified kind of noise, but none of them objects, and Kalon and Frog leap to activity, and Haoti smiles. It's not as bright as before, but it's something, anyway.

Tyne can speak well of its king, or it could if it knew how happily he spends a whole day shoveling manure and taking care of animals. More than that, it gives Valira hope for Haoti, who has friends who tease him and who doesn't shirk hard work. The boy she knew wouldn't have done that, but the man he is will, it seems.

*

“I know it's not,” Haoti says in the car on the way back to the palace.

Valira doesn't ask him what he means, because she knows and because she doesn't know or trust these bodyguards. “It made sense,” she says, as much as she's willing to give away with strangers around. “But we don't need to talk about it. I like them, Kalon and Frog. You met Kalon in university, you said?”

“Yes. Family issues in the Underdark, so he came above the surface to study, and found that he liked it. And then he dragged Frog along with him.” Haoti smiles. “I was the chief witness at their wedding, if you'll believe it.”

Maybe a day ago, she wouldn't have believed Haoti had any friends good enough to want to witness them tying their lives together, but Lost Flame has shown her enough of him that she's ashamed of the thought. “Tell me about it, then. About them. How did they meet?”

Haoti spins an improbable tale for most of the drive home, of a city that sounds worse than Theogonia, some hallucinatory mushrooms, and a childhood friendship that turned into much more, and by the end of it, he seems to have forgotten to be awkward and apologetic about assuming the palace is her home, and he's genuinely regretful about having to say goodbye as soon as they reach the residence door so he can catch up on a day's worth of business.

Kithri arrives with dinner and scolds her about being filthy and smelling terrible and then asks her a hundred questions about rats and sheep and the refuge instead of letting Valira go soak the day's dirt out of her skin, and it's not home like Alya's house is, but it's not too far from it, either.

*

Valira opens her door the next morning and finds Phi on the other side of it. “Good morning,” she says, with a smile and a yawn. “How was your visit with your family? You missed a nice day at the refuge yesterday. I don't need hot water this morning, I told King Haoti this morning that I'd let him try one of Alya's tea blends over breakfast.”

“Valira,” says Phi, and Valira only then realizes just how sober she looks, how sad. “Do you think I can come in for a moment?”

That can't mean anything good, but surely if there was something truly horrible, they would have woken her up for it. “Of course. Come in. Is something wrong with Terry? Or Quil?”

“No, they're both fine. He'll be with us in a few hours, and I haven't seen Quil yet this morning, but I haven't heard that she isn't fine.” Phi comes through the door when Valira steps out of the way and shuts it firmly behind her, then offers Valira a tablet. “The Greenwoods made a statement early this morning. I thought you should see it before you went to breakfast with the king. He'll want to talk about it too, but I thought you'd … you should know.”

Valira thinks of being seventeen and sitting in her room waiting to be called to see her uncle and her parents, and the way an assistant came to her looking so sad and so sorry and so full of compassion for her undoubted surprise, and thinks of being twenty-one and explaining the situation to Alya over a cup of tea and Alya's anger and shock and Valira trying to explain that it was expected. No one's ever understood that, her lack of surprise, her lack of anger. She takes the tablet.

There's the statement, taken out of whatever article it showed up in first, just the bare facts of it, the sum total of one sentence. _The Greenwoods sees no reason to comment on the life of one expatriate seeking Tynish citizenship._ The attribution goes to the king's office, so her uncle took care of it without involving her parents. Not that he would. They're not her parents anymore.

She takes a breath and looks at Phi. “How's the press taking it?”

“Valira—” Whatever Phi sees in her face, it stops her. “Split. Most of it is on your side entirely, and calling the Greenwoods heartless. Some more conservative elements say that after your disgrace, you shouldn't have expected anything else.”

“I didn't.” Phi's eyebrows draw together. Valira shakes her head. “I honestly didn't. I was disinherited, disowned, and removed from my name and property, and all but deported, since I was sent to stay with a distant cousin in Hylene until I turned eighteen and could be a university's problem. I was speaking with the voice of the Greenwoods, and I said something that could invite reprisals. That was it.”

“You were a child, and not to even acknowledge that you were once part of their family—”

“It's how they protect themselves. Let it go, Phi. I wasn't expecting a different answer.”

Phi sets her jaw, but she doesn't say anything for a long minute. Valira looks at the statement again. It's kinder than it could have been, but she doesn't think it will comfort Phi to hear it. She was preparing herself for the words _Valira Wayfinder is not a member of the Linnaeus family_. At least they didn't feel the need to cruelly spell out what she already knows. “You should have been,” she finally says. “But I know that family sometimes isn't what it should be. It just means you can make a new one.”

Valira nods. It seems like Phi might have experience in the matter, but there's no way of asking and having it come out right, not now. Not when half the reason she would be asking is just because she has no idea how to go seeking a new family, since Alya, her first attempt, is dead. “Thank you,” she says. “For being angry. They're doing what they have to, but it's good to hear anyway.”

“No one has to do this,” says Phi, and takes the tablet back. “Are you still up for breakfast with the king? Quil is in the greenhouses again today and says you're welcome, because those seedlings you were working on the other day are doing much better now. And you're welcome to have dinner with us again, if you like. It's Kithri's day off, so she has some people to visit, but the three of us are happy to see you.”

Valira dares a smile. “And I wouldn't be interrupting the three of you?”

Phi doesn't deny anything, and confirms a few things with a sly smile. Maybe she's letting Valira see her confirm them through some kind of pity, but still, it's nice to be let in on a piece of the secret. “We have plenty of time to see each other.”

“Come here,” Valira says impulsively, and gestures around her big empty room. “There's a table that will seat four, plenty of space, and the kitchen will deliver something nice for us. I can host you all, if you're willing.”

Phi smiles at her. “I think I can speak for all of us in saying that I'd like that. Now, you'll be late to breakfast if we wait too long, and if you don't need time, you may as well finish getting dressed so I can take you up. I'll meet you outside in a moment.”

Phi is kind. She doesn't knock, lets Valira have five minutes to get her breathing under control before she gets dressed, picks up her favorite jar of Alya's comforting tea, and comes to the door to be escorted upstairs.

*

Haoti is pale and angry when he opens the door to the breakfast room. “My lady, good morning. Hello, Phi. How's your family?”

“Well, your Majesty,” says Phi. “I took the liberty of showing her the statement.” He nods at her. “I'll leave you two alone, and make sure everyone else does too.”

“Thank you. I've already cleared my meetings for the morning. The Prime Minister can wait, the bill's not going to vote for a while still.” Valira comes in, and he shuts the door behind her, Phi on the other side of it. Haoti paces a few steps to the table, turns, and clasps his hands behind his back like he's expecting a scolding from a superior officer. “Someone owes you an apology, Valira. I don't think it's me, this time, but I don't know.”

“This is what was going to happen,” she explains, as gently as she can, and bypasses him to go to the table and put her jar of tea down, seeing the familiar tray of hot water, two infusers, two cups, all the equipment for tea. Without anything else to do with her hands, she starts on it. “It was always going to happen. This was kinder than they could have been.”

“I can make acknowledging you a condition of continued cordial diplomacy.”

Valira turns around. Amazingly, from the look on his face, it's a sincere offer. “That would be stupid. As long as you're not going to declare war on them, it won't matter. It will be a wrench, but … the Greenwoods has no military, so neutrality is their only strength.”

“It doesn't look good for them to be disavowing their own princess this way, have they considered that?”

“They have to be consistent. Theogonia has to know that I wasn't speaking for the Greenwoods when I spoke out against them, and even if the government changes, whoever rules it next will be comforted to know that if a Linnaeus speaks out against _them_ , they'll get the same treatment.” She pours their tea and sets the infusers in their cups and then nods at him. “Sit down, let's let that steep for a moment.”

“How can you be calm about this? They're your family.”

Valira sighs and looks out the window, because she can't look at him right now. His anger on her behalf, and Phi's, is a comfort, but she's exhausted by it too. “No, they're not. Because of my mistake.”

“You were right, Theogonia is xenophobic and treats its citizens of uncommon races horribly and deserve the revolution that's inevitably coming within the next decade, that wasn't a mistake, even if it wasn't a politically wise choice. But family forgives. Even my father did, when I disappointed him.”

“Because Tyne has power, and the Greenwoods only has power as long as we are trusted to never, ever take a side. The second we have an enemy angry enough with us to move against us, we're gone, but we won't make war, take the lives of people following orders.”

Haoti snorts. “Better to die than to kill?”

“Yes. It's the way of the Greenwoods.”

He's quiet for long enough that she eventually fishes her infuser out of her cup, and then his too, when he doesn't seem inclined to move. There's some kind of vegetable scramble between them this morning, steaming and waiting to be dished out, but neither of them reaches for it. “Don't you miss them?”

“Some of them. My cousins, mostly. Rowan was the only one I saw before I left, and he was supporting my uncle as his heir, so we didn't get to talk. But the others, I took care of them a lot. I liked to do that better than my lessons, and they liked that I took them out to the gardens and the woods, so I saw more of them than I saw of the rest of my family.” One of them has to move. Valira starts dishing out scramble, and takes a piece of toast too, and Haoti, after a moment, follows her example. “Do you miss yours?”

It's low, asking that, but he just grimaces, acknowledging the hit, and then answers, to her surprise. “My mother, often. My father, almost never.” He looks down at his cup of tea, and up at her again. “She thinks I'm too much like him. Aside from hating the public eye, it's why she's not here.”

Valira didn't know the king well, but from the papers and from her vague memories, she had no fondness for him. “You're not,” she says. “Like him, from what I can remember. Your father would never have shoveled sheep shit for more than an hour and then gone off to shovel different kinds of shit.”

That wins her a thin shade of a smile. It's better than anything else she's seen from him this morning, anyway, even if it immediately lapses back to frustrated anger. “You deserve better from your family.”

“So you said, the night you showed up on my doorstep. And you keep saying it. But you also told Seath that first morning I was here, and I agree, that the time for wars over the squabbles of kings and queens is long past. You have to let it go. The way you let any injustices from your own family go because you need to.”

“I might have an easier time letting it go if it seemed to bother you at all. All you'll say is that you understand.”

“I've had a long time to come to terms with it.” Valira forces a few bites of breakfast down, and then takes a sip of her tea, which does her much more good. Haoti, perhaps seeing that she needs a little bit of a rest, drinks some of his own, fast again. Apparently he doesn't mind burning his throat. “Does it help you if I say that sometimes I'm so angry about it, and so sad, that I can barely breathe?”

He drops his gaze to the table. “This isn't supposed to be about helping me. I'm sorry to have made it so.” Valira waits him out. “Yes, it does.”

“But it doesn't change that everything I said, I said having been raised knowing that making an enemy could get me ostracized, to preserve the family, the country, over one person. So yes. It was awful for me. But it doesn't change that it's exactly what I always knew would happen.”

“That's worse, I think.”

Valira takes another drink of her tea. “But it means that you're absolved of the need to do anything. Let your press office say whatever they want to, but that's all your getting from the Greenwoods, and that's all I want from them.”

Haoti doesn't look happy about it, but he lets her change the subject, and that's really all she wants.

*

Quil is checking her hives, a whole neat row of them at the far edge of the palace's property, and seems happy to give Valira gear and put her to work, though she's quiet and thoughtful the whole time.

Valira isn't equal to the task of another explanation about her family, another person assuring her that she deserved better, so she's grateful for the quiet, and lets Quil have the time to think of whatever it is that she needs to say. It waits until they're so deep in a cloud of bees that it's hard to hear anything over the hum of them, and even Phi and Terry, retreated to a safe distance, won't be able to hear them.

“Sometimes,” she finally says, “my magic slips away from me. Sometimes it just makes a little inconvenience, or something silly happens. Sometimes there's fire and I get hurt or worse, someone else does.”

Valira waits while Quil lifts a frame out of a hive, pursing her lips as she checks the comb, gently brushing a few bees away with ungloved hands, which Valira doesn't even dare do. When Quil puts the frame back and doesn't continue, she sighs and lets herself answer. “And your family ostracized you for it?”

“No. They never did, even when it scared them. And Phi and Terry don't. The people who are meant to be around you never do. It doesn't mean I think the people who are scared of me once they find out are wrong. They're probably right to be. But not everyone is scared.” She looks at Valira sidelong. “And not everyone thinks it's terrible when you speak your mind.”

There are a hundred arguments Valira wants to make to that—that she wouldn't do it today, that it was a choice and Quil's spurts of wild magic aren't, that her family might have even agreed with her and still ostracized her due to the way the Greenwoods works—but she'd rather Quil's way of making their lives a simile than someone else telling her that her family was wrong and she deserves better. Quil is just telling her that she's not alone, and it's easier to listen to that alone than it is to listen to it attached to the other arguments.

“You and Phi and Terry,” she says, because she feels like she can, hidden by the hum of the bees, glancing past all the wings to see the two of them watching them, smiling, but showing no signs that they can hear their talk.

Quil flushes, as she seems to a lot around them. “I don't want to … lose anyone carelessly, by trying for something that's not meant to be. They're important enough without changing anything.”

Valira almost wishes she were the kind of person to tell her to reach out and hold on without fear, that she's known them all less than a week and can already tell that there's too much fondness between them to lead to anything that might hurt them. “I understand,” she says instead, and tilts her head at them. Terry is whispering something in Phi's ear, and it doesn't look professional. “But they don't look like they're willing to be lost.”

Quil looks their way too, and waves when Phi does, both of them lighting up with smiles, and Terry too when he catches it all. “I know. But it's still hard.”

“I understand,” Valira says again, even if she's not sure that she does. It's been too long since she had anyone to lose.

“You're not alone here,” Quil says, as though she can see the thought in Valira's head. “We all like you, we truly do—the three of us, Kithri, you haven't met many others, but people are interested in you, and like what they know of you.” She hesitates, bites her lip. “Even King Haoti seems to like you, and I don't think he likes many people.”

“I think he likes people,” Valira says without really meaning to, thinking of Kalon Bel and Frog, and his assessment of Phi and Terry as good allies and how he remembered Quil's name. “I just don't think he says it. You said he was lonely, the other night. I think it's more that than anything.”

“You're not alone,” Quil says again, “and maybe he's not anymore either.”

After that, there's not much but the humming of the bees while they finish up all the work.

*

Valira welcomes all of them to her room as soon as they're all off shift, Kithri arriving with plates from the kitchen and Phi and Terry just ducking in when their relief arrives to stand out in the hallway. Quil's the last one there, after cleaning a day's work off herself.

“I feel bad that I'm befriending you two and not the rest of my security staff,” Valira says, frowning at the closed door.

“You see us most when you're awake, so it makes sense,” says Terry, moving to help Kithri set out dinner when she glares at him. “But they'd all be happy to get to know you, no doubt.”

“I'll have to make a point of it. I don't want them to be wallpaper.”

Phi smiles at her. “Everyone will appreciate that. And I appreciate it already—we all do, I think.”

Valira smiles back, knowing that everyone is being gentle with her today, pointing out kindness where they otherwise might not, but still appreciating it.

Kithri interrupts before she can answer, talking about a letter from a friend overseas, and then it only takes a few questions to get her talking about her years and years of traveling, as an ordained cleric of Yondalla. It's anyone's guess how she ended up in the kitchens of the palace of Tyne, but Valira decides not to ask. No one else's sore spots need to be pressed today. The chatter lasts them through half of the meal, until there's a knock on the door.

Phi and Terry both twitch, but whoever it is, it's either a bodyguard or someone vetted by them, so Valira goes to the door and swings it open, to find Haoti on the other side. She blinks and speaks before she can think better of it. “Was I expecting you?”

“No. I shouldn't have intruded, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you would have guests.”

“I thought it was my turn to host them.” He starts turning away from the door, and Valira looks at her bodyguard and his, standing awkwardly in the hall, pretending not to look at them, and takes firm hold of his sleeve. Which makes his bodyguard twitch a little, but he relaxes after only a second. “Come in, say hello, tell me whatever it is you came to say. It can't hurt.” She frowns. “Unless it's private?”

“I brought you something. It's … a little private, I suppose. But nothing you might not want to share with friends.”

“Come in, then. There's still enough food for you, if you want to eat. Kithri thinks we'll all starve.”

He finally comes through the door, and Valira shuts it firmly behind him, but that just makes him look a little trapped. “I don't mean to interrupt,” he says, and it takes her a moment to realize that it's addressed to the other four, all of whom but Kithri have stood up awkwardly from the table, and all of whom quickly murmur “your Majesty” now that he's looking at them, which only makes him look more unhappy.

“Nonsense,” she says firmly, and then turns to her friends. “You can call him Haoti, none of you are on duty right now. Including you, Haoti. Right?”

“Well, I'm here on state business, officially, but I really don't need or want any formality. Please, everyone, sit down.” He lowers his voice. “I really can't interrupt your dinner.”

“Have you eaten?” That startles him into shaking his head, and she thinks again of Quil thinking he's lonely, and none of them disagreeing. “Then you're staying.” She'll just apologize to everyone later, if they seem to dislike it. “There's pie, apparently. You can't turn down Kithri's berry pie.”

“As long as there's enough.”

“There's plenty,” Kithri says firmly. “Now, what are you here for? No more news from the Greenwoods, I hope. They've said plenty today, and none of it worthy of talking about.”

One sentence doesn't seem like “plenty” to Valira, but it gets Haoti moving, pulling out a folder that he's been holding at his side. “This came through today, for you. I had it expedited, and, it came after business hours today. I think they double expedited it, considering this morning. Open it.”

She does, and there's her own name and face looking up at her: Tynish identification papers, the ones that call her an official citizen, naturalized and full, with voting rights and everything. After a moment, she finds that she has to swallow tears. “This is … I want to say you shouldn't have pulled strings for me, but that sounds ungrateful, and I am so very, very grateful.” Her voice wavers on the last word, and he looks alarmed, hand twitching at his side but not quite reaching out for her.

“What is it?” Quil asks, quiet enough that Valira could ignore her if she wanted to.

“Citizenship,” she says, when she trusts her voice. “I'm officially no longer a child of the Greenwoods.”

“That certainly calls for a celebration, then,” says Terry, with just a little too much cheer. “Sit down, both of you. Yes, you too, your—Haoti, you can't bring good news on a bad day and then creep out like an unwanted guest. Kithri, did you bring wine in that bottomless cart of yours?”

Kithri snorts. “No, but I brought something stronger, and I can be convinced to share.”

Whatever she pours out smells lethal and tastes worse, but Valira still grins around her first sip, sneaked while Kithri is pouring for everyone else. “What do we toast, then?” she asks. “My citizenship? It feels a little self-centered.”

Haoti clears his throat. “If I may?” No one objects—and they wouldn't, but Valira hopes that will change, if they're all going to spend time together. If they think of Haoti as a king, they're more likely to think of her as a princess, and she doesn't want that. “To officially belonging where you already belonged.”

“To belonging,” everyone agrees, and Valira's so busy swallowing more tears that she doesn't manage to say it before she drinks, the alcohol burning as it goes down.

To her relief, the conversation moves on after that, and Haoti stays. It's not as comfortable a meal as it would have been without him, but it's not bad either. He asks about Phi's brothers, a whole adopted family's worth of them whose names Valira can't yet begin to keep straight but who Haoti seems to know entirely, if not deeply. He asks about Quil's sister, who's apparently on scholarship to a boarding school not far from where Valira was living. He and Terry both seem to have opinions on some sports team for a sport Valira hasn't even heard of, and even Kithri thaws enough to tell them that they're both wrong and that her team is best.

Kithri is the first to leave, claiming she has to be up early to bake, marshaling them all into cleaning up the dishes so she can take them on her way out, and giving them a glare and telling them to behave, not that any of them were misbehaving. Phi and Terry and Quil leave together, Phi and Terry offering to escort Quil home, since she's a little inclined to giggle since Kithri poured them all a second cup of whatever horrible concoction she chooses to drink.

That leaves Valira with Haoti, who's edging towards the door until he turns just enough to catch sight of her neat row of plants, and then he makes a soft, interested noise and steps forward again. “You kept it. The valerian. You _brought_ it.”

Valira can feel her cheeks heat, but there's nothing to be ashamed of. “Most of my plants, in that house, they're not really _mine_. I take care of them for the nursery, and then I take them back. Alya kept all her plants in the garden, in the soil, and so do I, mostly. But the valerian, that's mine.”

He inspects the rest of them, serious and curious. They're all thriving, with so much attention just for them. She'll need to repot the aloe soon, and the geranium won't be long. “The others?”

“Too sick for me to leave. One of my coworkers said she'd look after the plants and cats while I was gone—Telah, her name is—but I don't know how much trouble she'll go to, or if she's brought the plants back to the nursery, so I just brought these ones.” He's still looking at the plants, and it's easier to say what needs saying when he's not looking at her. “Thank you. Again, I mean.”

He looks back at her, solemn and stubborn, and doesn't say anything about the Greenwoods, and the press frenzy that's no doubt continuing after their statement. “Now you know for sure that anywhere in Tyne can be your home, if you want it to be,” he says instead.

“I do,” says Valira, and even believes it.

Haoti doesn't stay much longer, and she's happy to see him off, exchange a few pleasant words with both of their bodyguards, and send him off to take care of whatever else he has to do before he can sleep.

*

The next day is quiet, from a mostly-silent breakfast with Haoti to an evening meal on her own, but the day after that, Quil turns up to the greenhouse where Valira is working in the middle of her day off, bemused and happy. Phi is with her, but not Terry, who's on nighttime rotation and bemoaning his fate, and she's the one to greet her. “I thought you were going to town on some errands today.”

“I was going to, but I have a visitor, unexpectedly.” She turns to Valira. “ _We_ have visitors, actually. I don't want to interrupt, but you really should come inside.”

“What?” Valira asks, turning to Phi, but Phi just shrugs, frowns, and gets on her radio.

“I don't think you'd believe me if I told you,” says Quil, “but I think you'll want to hurry.”

Phi nods, still waiting for a response on her radio, and so Valira starts walking. She has no reason not to trust Quil, even if she has no idea what guests Quil would say were for both of them. Maybe gardeners, or beekeepers, but she still can't think of any in particular that she wants to see. Halfway through the walk, she falls back to walk with Phi, whose eyebrows have climbed her forehead since the radio chatter stopped. “Are you going to tell me?”

“Quil's right that you might not believe it, but it really is a guest for you—and for Quil, of course, but she sees her family fairly often.”

Valira's stomach pitches at the mention of family, and Phi must notice, because she gives her an encouraging smile, and when they get inside, she's the one who steers them, since apparently the guest or guests have been moved from where Quil saw them last, to an anonymous parlor in the residence where guests can be entertained.

She can hear excited chatter from unfamiliar voices as she gets closer, and Quil and Phi both gesture her forward, so Valira is the one to open the door.

It takes a moment for the sight in front of her to resolve as five teenage girls. One of them, a tiefling, must be Quil's sister, the one who should be at boarding school. The others she doesn't recognize: one with bright red hair, one with arms crossed trying to look unimpressed, one peering at a bookshelf, and one stock still in the middle of the room staring at Valira. She's blonde, sunglasses pushed up on her head, but there's something familiar about her face, and about her growing smile.

“Valira,” she says, and there's something familiar about the voice too, and the accent is _definitely_ Greenwoods, and then she's rushing Valira, throwing her arms around her. “I couldn't believe it when you showed up on the news, I'm so glad to know you're okay,” she says.

Valira finally realizes who it must be, with nearly a decade of age on her, and then she's holding on as tight as she can right back, shocked speechless until she can finally say “Trilli?”

“Yes!” Trilli pulls back just far enough to beam at her, the same urchin grin she's always had, or did as a child. She's far enough from the throne that she's not much in the news, so Valira didn't know if she'd kept it. It seems she has. “I can't believe how close to me you were! When I found out I had to come up and see you. It's okay, our head teacher gave us leave.”

“Close to you?” Valira says, overwhelmed and carried on the tide of Trilli's words, still clinging to her for assurance that this is really happening. Everyone else in the room is discreetly pretending to ignore them, from Quil introducing Phi to her sister to the other three girls, now all clustered next to the bookshelf with the one who looks actually interested in it. “What do you mean?”

“I complained too much about how they treated you and their national policies, but I didn't do it publicly, so I didn't get disowned, just shipped off to boarding school here in Tyne. I suppose they expect Tyne to absorb all of their problems. Anyway, we're just an hour from you! And Cordelia says you're friends with her sister.”

“I suppose I am,” says Valira, dazed, and then blinks herself into a frown. “You didn't need to get yourself in trouble with the family for me. You shouldn't have, in fact. You need your family.”

Trilli sets her chin, and that's familiar too, from every time she dug her heels in about what they should have for a snack, what game they should play. “And so did you. So you've got me! And if they want to disown me for talking to you, they can do it.”

“No, they can't,” Valira says, as firmly as she can when she's talking to her cousin again for the first time in years. “You deserve—”

“Wren and Robin and Andula and Finch all send their love, and Rowan would if he weren't such a stick-in-the-mud loyalist,” she barrels on like she can't hear Valira. “We're scheming trying to figure out how to get them all across the border to see you. The older generations will get unhappy if we all suddenly want to be in Tyne, but it's their own fault for having stupid foreign policy.”

“You really can't—”

“Meet my friends!” Trilli continues, happily ignoring Valira's attempts to argue with her, and links their arms when she turns to face the rest of the room, pointing first to the girl who's actually interested in the books. “That's Tesni, she's all the way from the Boreal Valley and we figured this counted as a culturally broadening experience, seeing all the sights and the seat of Tynish government.” Tesni gives Valira a vague, slightly embarrassed smile, and Trilli moves on to point at the redheaded girl, who has just managed to knock a book on the floor. “That's Wynne, and her family lives a little ways away from here so we're going to visit them at some point. And that's Star,” she says, moving on to the other blonde one, who hasn't bothered to push her sunglasses up so she can be seen but who seems to be scowling. Trilli hesitates for a moment before she continues. “She has a car.”

“And I'm pleased to meet all of them—all of you—but I still don't—”

“And that's Cordelia,” Trilli finishes, with something like a sigh.

“It is,” says Quil, smiling at Valira even as she tilts her head in a silent question, wondering if she's okay, or overwhelmed. She's both, so Valira just nods. She'll want more than a few private moments with Trilli in short order, but for now, she can do this. “Cordelia, who is supposed to be in class for several more days before her mid-term break starts.”

Trilli smiles winningly. It's amazing how little she's changed, over the years, that she's still the one trying to get her friends out of trouble. “Yes, but Professor Idilus said that family is important, and we all finished our exams early because it's a year for standardized tests that are scheduled all around the country, so we were just doing busywork anyway, and it's our last year at school, so the busywork really doesn't have any point. And Professor Arfil agreed, and he's all of our advisor, so if he's fine with it, you all should be.”

“And I suppose all of your parents agreed to this,” Quil says, eyebrows raised. “Considering Mama didn't tell me you were coming for a visit ...”

“Arfil and Idilus really did say yes,” says Wynne, and then bites her lip like she's not sure she's allowed into the conversation.

“I think we'll all need to have a conversation about that.” Quil looks around until she lays eyes on Phi. “Phi, can we—”

“They were arranging something, it should be ready by now.” Phi gives the girls a friendly smile that even the scowling one seems at least somewhat impressed by. “I think Lady Valira and Lady Trillium deserve a chance for a private chat. There should be some snacks laid out for you a few doors down, and Cordelia, maybe you can tell us how long you five are thinking of staying, and we'll figure out what to do with you.”

“This room is clear for our chat, though?” Valira checks.

Phi smiles at her, comforting and warm. “It is. King Haoti will probably come down at some point, as he has to with visiting royalty, but he's in meetings this afternoon, so you should have plenty of privacy first.”

There's a lot of awkward shuffling and chatter as they all leave, Wynne almost falling over her own feet in an attempt at a curtsey on her way out, and then Valira is left alone with her cousin and suddenly has nothing to say.

Trilli, it seems, doesn't have that problem. “They wouldn't tell us where you went,” she says as soon as the door shuts with them alone in the room. “Just that you weren't in the family anymore and we shouldn't ask, because a daughter of the Greenwoods wouldn't have acted as you did. It took Finch a week to sneak off somewhere and figure out what you'd done that was so bad, even though we all agreed after that horrible interview with their president, and then we all went to Rowan and he confirmed it. And that you were alive. We thought they'd killed you.”

“They wouldn't. Peace at all costs, remember?”

Trilli scoffs. “And what kind of peace is a peace that means leaving family behind, with no room to forgive them? Anyway, it's all done now, we're going to browbeat Rowan into restoring your place in the family whenever he takes the throne but in the meantime at least we know where you are now. They can't forbid us from making friends with a private citizen of Tyne without seeming like hypocrites.”

“I don't want any of you getting in trouble for me.”

“Well, you don't get to do that without sounding like a hypocrite either.” Trilli beams at her. “I still can't believe I'm here.”

“I can't believe you're here either.” Valira hugs her again. It may be a while before she trusts Trilli out of her sight. “Now, tell me how long you're staying and then tell me absolutely everything I've missed since I left.”

“The rest of this week and all of the next, and I'm going to stay here the whole time, even if Wynne and Star and maybe Tesni go on to Windell for a few days.” Trilli drags her over to a pair of chairs and sits down. “And I'll tell you all about my life if you tell me all about yours.”

Valira smiles, helpless. “I think I can manage that.”

*

“Lady Trillium,” Haoti says when they arrive at dinner that night, bowing over Trilli's hand with more formality than he's given Valira so far. Then again, Trilli is seventeen and likely to find that kind of thing intriguing. “It's an honor to have you here. If I'd realized you were in Tyne, I would have invited you up as soon as Valira gave me permission, or put the two of you in touch when I realized where she was.”

“I suppose it's not your fault,” Trilli says graciously, though she's more closed off than she's been all afternoon.

“I look forward to meeting your friends during your visit too, if they care to meet me.”

Trilli eyes him, and Valira lets them deal with whatever they need to deal with. “Tesni would find it culturally interesting,” she finally says. “Their city was run by some kind of pope and then there was a bit of a political revolution and she got sent here, but they don't have kings. Anyway, they're all eating with Cordelia's sister and her girlfriend.”

“Phi is married, and not to Quil,” Valira says as gently as she can, not sure if she wants to smile or wince. “Her husband is the one waiting outside the dining room for us, actually. Terry, I introduced you.”

“So she's single?” Trilli asks, which seems likely to end very poorly.

“I'm sure everyone would be pleased to meet you,” Valira tells Haoti, who seems to be swallowing a smile. “Trilli anyway is staying for about a week and a half, if you don't mind. The others, or at least some of them, might not be here that whole time, but she probably will be.”

“This is your home as long as you want it to be,” says Haoti. “That means you can have whatever guests you like. Besides, as a member of the royal family of the Greenwoods, Lady Trillium deserves my welcome as well as yours. If I'd known you were here before, my lady, I would have invited you up on a school vacation.”

Trilli gives a sharp nod, and she's formal and stiff all through dinner, no matter what Valira tries, not that she knows how to try much. “I should find my friends,” she says, almost as soon as they've finished the meal off with berries and cream. It hasn't taken the kitchen long to figure out Valira's favorites.

“Of course,” says Valira. “Do you want me to come with you, or—”

“If you don't mind waiting a moment, Valira, I'd like a chance to speak to you,” says Haoti.

Trilli scowls at him even though Valira is almost certain she was about to say that she doesn't need Valira along while she no doubt goes to pour her heart out to her friends about everything they've discussed over the past several hours. “I guess so.” She turns to Valira. “We'll have breakfast?”

Valira looks at Haoti, but he's already nodding, so she says “Come to my room for it, and maybe my friend Kithri can be convinced to give us pie for breakfast.”

“I like pie,” says Trilli, and then throws her arms around Valira and holds on for a few seconds. “Good night.”

“Get some rest,” Valira says, a familiar plea from when her cousins would all stay up all night chattering and then droop through their days. “Come to my room whenever you wake up and we'll eat.” When Trilli is out the door, collecting one of the bodyguards as she goes, Valira turns to Haoti. “Sorry about breakfast tomorrow. It's just—”

“I understand.”

Valira sighs. “And I'm sorry that she was a little cold. I think she needs to be mad at someone and isn't ready to be at me yet, so it gets pushed on you.”

“I think we've established that I don't think any of your family should be angry with you.” He frowns. “It's going okay? I wish I'd known she was around, you could have been better prepared.”

Valira knows her eyes are red, but she doesn't much want to talk about her hours of conversation with Trilli about how much she missed them, and how much she was missed. “It would have been good to be prepared, but that's not your fault. Or even hers. And it's … I still can't believe she's here, that's all.”

“I meant it. She's welcome anytime. All her school breaks, if she likes.”

Valira swallows. “I'll tell her so. And I'll certainly keep her around for the next week or so until she has to get back to school.”

“I was going to ask you ...” Haoti frowns, shakes his head. “Before she came, I planned to ask you tonight about attending a few meals with me in the next week or so. Parliament has been on recess, but they're back now, and Seath wants to push his reforms forward, which means a lot of wining and dining.”

It means precious time away from Trilli, but she did promise she'd be at his disposal. “Wining and dining trying to convince people of the bill's merit?”

“Wining and dining letting people try to convince me of one side or the other,” he corrects. “I owe Seath, but not so much that I don't want to listen to both sides. There's some controversy.”

“You'll have to explain it to me before any of the dinners I attend, it sounds like. And of course I'll attend some, even if Trilli is here. I think Cordelia is planning to stay here with Quil, so she'll have someone to keep her entertained. Pick three or so important events, and I'll show up. Without dirt on my knees, even.”

“Solomon might tell me that having you show up straight from the gardens would be good for my image.”

“I don't much care what Solomon's opinion is,” she says, too fast, and then winces. “Sorry. I know he's the only family you have close right now. Like me with Trilli.”

Haoti frowns, drums his fingers against his thigh while he thinks. “My mother,” he finally says, “looks at me and sees my father and can't bear to look further, after the way he treated her. I can't blame her, though I hope she comes to see that I'm trying not to be like him in the worse ways. Solomon sees some good in me, at least, and thinks it's his duty to bring it out. Or force it out.”

“I hope that's you giving me permission to dislike him, because it certainly didn't help my opinion of him.”

Haoti laughs a little, though he doesn't seem amused. “Maybe it was. I can't dislike him, but if you want to on my behalf, I won't mind. And I know you won't get angry at your family, but it seems that Trilli and I are more than willing to do it for you.”

“And Phi, and Quil, and Terry. And Kithri, but she seems angry at most everyone most of the time.” Valira hesitates, but he's being candid when he doesn't need to be, so it's worth doing him the same favor. “I know I should be angry with them. I just can't.”

“I understand that, at least somewhat. I won't ask you to be angry at them, as long as you don't ask me to be angry at Solomon or my mother.”

Valira wants to squirm with the sudden guilt of not being angry at Aredhel, but she is, when she thinks about it. She's got no fondness for Haoti's father, and can't blame Aredhel for hating any thought of him, when she has her theories about how she was treated, but none of it is Haoti's fault. He might be brusque like his father could be, might have a tendency for arrogance and formality, but there's more in him than that, and she should see it, as a mother. “I think I can promise that,” she finally says. “And I can tell you that no matter what Solomon says, nothing I've seen tells me that you need to be forced to be good. You've done your best by me since you showed up on my doorstep.”

“And I can tell you that there's no shame in making an enemy when it's an enemy worth making.”

Valira nods. “I'll leave you to your business. Let me know about those things you want me to attend, and I'll do it. Especially if you can brief me on this bill. The papers are short on news about it, since the text isn't public yet.”

“I'll send you a brief as soon as I have time to write one,” he promises, and to her surprise, he bows.

His father's stiff formality, she finds, just seems like awkward courtesy from him. More's the pity that his family doesn't understand that. Her worn-kneed jeans don't seem fit for a curtsey in return, but she offers her hand, letting him choose whether it's a handshake or another part of his old-fashioned manners. Sure enough, he takes it and bows again, and then gives her a smile. “I'll see you at some point tomorrow,” she promises, “even if I can't make it to breakfast.”

“If you don't find me, I'll find you,” he says, and his smile lasts until she's out of the room, collecting Terry and heading back to her room.

*

The next two days are some of the best Valira remembers spending. As soon as Trilli is up in the morning, they're together, sitting somewhere or walking, Trilli telling her all about herself and the rest of Valira's cousins, how they are, what they're like now, years since Valira last saw them. For a few hours a day, they spend time with Trilli's friends, which usually means Quil too, and Kithri more often than not when she's not working, and Phi and Terry as often as they're working and sometimes even when they're not.

The evening of the second day, though, Phi delivers another bag of nice clothes to Valira's door, and Trilli goes off to spend the evening with her friends alone while Valira goes to keep Haoti company.

“This is going to be the most bearable,” he says as soon as he shows up at her door, apologetic. “Lauren is a former navy officer, and she doesn't like me too much, I don't think, but she's smart and I like her politics and I'm interested to hear her opinion on the bill.” He hesitates. “And I'd like to talk to you about something when it's done.”

“Should I be worried?”

“I really hope not.”

He doesn't seem upset, just tentative, so he's probably telling the truth, but that doesn't make it easy for Valira to concentrate during the dinner with Lauren Gaford, especially considering even the brief didn't help her much with the reform bill. On the surface of it, it seems to be an anti-corruption measure, which she can only approve of, but the mechanics of it don't make much sense to her.

Lauren doesn't seem happy about it either, or happy with Haoti as a result. She's polite to Valira, but she's sharp and sets her chin and is unwilling to be convinced whenever Haoti counters one of her points. Haoti looks more unhappy as the dinner goes on, so it seems like perhaps he's being convinced that the bill is the wrong move too, but he doesn't try agreeing with her, asking her to deepen her points or why Seath and his crowd might be fighting so hard for it.

Valira tries her best to do it for him, and gets brief smiles from Lauren, and a few explanations that don't quite connect with anything she knows, having studied the Greenwoods' system of government as a child rather than Tyne's, but doesn't seem to help his case much.

“Call me if you change your mind,” Lauren says when they finish their meal, all of them unsatisfied and at a frozen standstill. “We could use your support, your Majesty. You don't have to just interact with the Prime Minister.”

“I know. That's why I'm trying to arrange dinners with some of you,” Haoti assures her, though she doesn't seem reassured.

Her smile for Valira is a little more genuine. “And it was good to meet you, my lady. I hear you're a citizen now, so my congratulations to you. I doubt you'll end up in my district, but if you do, I hope I can count on your vote someday.”

That brings her up short. She's never voted in an election, spending her whole adult life somewhere she wasn't a citizen, and a member of the royal family and thus ineligible to vote in the Greenwoods. Still, she manages what she hopes is a sincere smile. “If I ever get the chance to vote for you, I'll quite likely do it. And my thanks. It was interesting getting to sit in on your conversation.”

Lauren lifts her chin, and she's still smiling, but it seems like she's speaking more to Haoti than Valira when she answers. “I can only hope it did some good.”

“I hope so too,” says Haoti, and Valira draws back to let them say their goodbyes before he escorts her out of the room.

“You could have told her that you have reservations,” she says when they're far enough away. “She was convincing, I _saw_ her convincing you. Why not just tell her that?”

“It's not that easy. I respect Lauren very much—”

“Then tell her that,” says Valira, exasperated beyond the telling of it. There are bodyguards following them, no one she knows but no one she's willing to say more in front of, either. “It's not my business, I suppose,” she says, resenting it. “But you're—we're not in private. I'm sorry.”

“I'll walk you back to your room, if you want to scold me properly,” he says, rueful and wry all at once. “I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

“Right. You had something to say. We can do that. And I won't scold you unless you want to hear it. You wanted company and support, not anything else.”

“No, I'll listen.”

Of course he will. Too many people have been telling him that he's not much of a king, she suspects, enough that he's more than willing to listen to them. She's still annoyed at him, but it takes all the teeth out of it to know that he's waiting for it, and never going to do anything like disagree. “Fine,” she says, even more annoyed by that, and keeps her own counsel until they make it to her room and can leave the bodyguards on the other side of the door. “You like her,” she starts, when he doesn't seem inclined to. “You respect her, and you agree with her.”

“I still want to hear more from Seath's side of the issue. He's an experienced statesman, and there must be something of merit in the bill if he's backing it this strongly.” Haoti winces when she can't bring herself to do more than glare. “Even if I did agree with her, I shouldn't say it.”

“Neutrality? You're trying to argue you should stay neutral when you've made it clear how you feel about my family doing it?” She shakes her head when he opens his mouth. “Sorry, that's not the point. We've had that conversation. But I don't understand … you don't speak to the people you like and respect, try to make them like and respect you right back. And they would, if you tried. But you hold yourself back and you let them think the worst, and I don't know how you'll get anywhere that way.”

Haoti frowns at the floor, and Valira refuses to feel guilty. She's trying to help. “I was raised to remember that when I try to befriend someone, they might feel obligated,” he finally says. “Kalon approached me.”

And that, with Frog, seems to be the sum total of his friends. It's hard to stay angry at him knowing that. “I don't know how to be friends with people either,” she says. It's an easy thing to admit, especially to him. He saw how she was living in Alya's house. “But it mostly seems to involve being kind and letting people be kind to you.”

“Oh. Speaking of—it's changing the subject, but I wanted to tell you that I've been thinking about your house.” Valira blinks, thrown. It is changing the subject, and there's more to say if he'll listen, if she can say it right, but the mention of Alya's house is enough to pique her interest. “I sent someone to do a security assessment, and they can't really put up necessary fences without making it less a part of the woods, but there are wards that could be put up with little trouble, to keep your property safe. I'd still recommend growing hedges, or a row of trees, to keep prying eyes away, but it could be safe there in a matter of weeks. You can be close to Trilli.”

Valira misses Alya's house and her life there with a sudden ache. She misses the feral cats who never scratched her and the house that smells of herbs and soil and the truck that barely runs. She could have that again, and Trilli too, only an hour's drive away, available whenever they're both free.

But she probably can't have the nursery, not in the same way as before. And she can't have Phi and Terry and Quil and Kithri and Haoti. “I'll … I'd be so grateful,” she says anyway. The palace is a temporary measure. It always has been. “It wouldn't take too many resources? I don't want to make life difficult for anyone.”

“For a while, anyway, we'll have to give you a security detail no matter where you are, here or somewhere else. But the spells, alarm systems, things like that … it shouldn't be too difficult to get them in place. I know you don't want to stay.”

Valira wants to be annoyed again, because that's him being sure that nobody actually likes him, and she's losing patience with that, but mostly she's thinking of the woods, and how much she misses them. “I won't … if it can be done, without making anything difficult for you, I'd love that. But I'm happy here too. Don't doubt that. I have friends now, and I keep myself busy in the garden. I got to help with tomato blight today.”

“Got to,” he says with a twitch of a smile. “I like you very much, you know.”

To her surprise, that makes her blush and duck her head. “There, see? You're kind to me, and it makes me like you. There's no obligation in that.”

When she finally forces herself to look up at him, he's nodding, thoughtful. “I still have to go carefully on this bill, but I'll keep it in mind. I know not everything is as my family has told me over time.”

“I'd venture to say that very little is,” she says. It always seems to come back to family with them.

“I could say the same,” he says, perhaps following her thoughts. “The next dinner won't be as pleasant. They're men I knew in university, old blood, and they're strongly in favor of the bill.”

Valira nods. “I'll prepare myself.” And then, because he's starting to look miserable again: “Perhaps I should bring Trilli. Or her friend Star. They wouldn't get away with much then.”

That thought makes him smile, even if it's wan. “I would really love to do that, but I'm not sure they'd survive it. The guests, I mean. Trilli and Star would be fine, I suspect.”

“I still need to arrange a time for you to meet all of them. I think it will be good for you. They're not exactly the sort to be impressed by royalty.”

“That does sound like exactly what I need.” His smile gets a little warmer. “And Kalon and Frog would agree, I suspect.”

It's not the end of the conversation, she suspects, but it's enough of an ending for now.

*

Trilli eats lunch with her in her room the next day, and midway through she stands up to frown through the door to the outside, where it's pouring rain. “You have a garden back there.”

“There was one once, anyway. It clearly hasn't been tended at all this growing season.” Nor for the one before it, if she's any judge. Since it only seems accessible through actual rooms in the residence, mostly hers, that's not shocking.

“You should do something with it. I know you and plants, you were always gardening at home. You're just letting those beds sit fallow?”

“It's not mine.”

Trilli's eyebrows go up. “Look, I don't know King Yahootie—”

“Haoti.”

“Whatever, I don't know him well, but he talks kind of a lot about how his home is your home, which means his gardens are your gardens.” Trilli grins triumphantly. “There. Let's plan them. That was always my favorite part.”

“Because you always tried to spell bad words in different colors of flower even though I always caught you,” says Valira, but now she's looking out the window too, at the garden beds that weren't even set to rest properly, sandy, with dead stalks still sticking out of them. “There's not much time left in the growing season.”

Trilli shrugs. “So plant things that grow fast. Or use some magic to help it along. I know you've got some of it, with nature.”

It would take a lot of her resources, and some time, but she might be able to make the garden bloom. If she stays long enough. “I think he's making it so it's safe for me to go back to my old house. To be near you.”

“And you want to?” Trilli asks with studied disinterest. At this point she seems to be watching raindrops race down the courtyard door more than anything else, but Valira doesn't really want to be meeting her eyes for this conversation either.

“Of course I want to be near you.”

“But you want to go back there? It kind of doesn't … it doesn't really sound like you were happy there. Once your mentor died, I mean.”

Valira puts her arm around Trilli's shoulders and squeezes. “Doesn't matter. I'd be happy near you.”

“Hmm.” Trilli doesn't sound very happy, but she rests her head on Valira's shoulder for two seconds before wriggling out of her grip, never content to stay still for long. “Come on, Quil's just stuck in a greenhouse moping about her bees not being out in the pouring rain, probably, and she's a gardener, you can commandeer her to help you plan this garden.”

“I'm not commandeering anyone, and _you_ should stick to Cordelia, because Quil's life seems quite complicated enough,” says Valira, but Trilli just grins at her. “I'm not ordering anyone to do anything, but I'll ask if she wants a new project.” She frowns out the window. “It will have to be a shade garden, with it in the middle of everything like this, but I think we can do it.”

Within ten minutes, she's texted Quil, and within another hour, all three of them, plus Cordelia and with unhelpful suggestions from Terry, are starting on plans for the garden.

*

She's glad for the project the next night, when she's politely told Haoti that no, she doesn't need an escort back to her room tonight and he should get some sleep.

She might seem like a madwoman, taking a pitchfork to a bed that needs turning over well after dark, but it's that or brain a member of parliament with one, so the garden is going to have to take the abuse.

Phi and Terry, having exchanged looks after she left tonight's dinner and followed her into her rooms and out to the garden, wisely stay off to one side and watch until the first part of the anger is under control. “Seems like that went well,” Terry ventures after a while, when Valira has moved on to making sure she didn't damage the roots of anything yet living.

“This is the old blood, old friends who are in favor of the bill, and he still thinks he needs to see both sides?”

“Are you angry at him, or them?” Phi asks, gentle as ever.

Valira scowls down at the ground. She's going to have to have her clothes laundered, if they can be salvaged at all after the way she's been flinging dirt around. “I don't know. Them, mostly. Him for feeling like he has to deal with people like that. You've been on his security detail for a while. Did you know them in university?”

She turns around just in time to see them exchange a look. It's Phi who answers. “No, we weren't with him till after. My sister Gari, she was at school with them all. Didn't have much good to say about them.”

“Including Haoti?”

“He didn't involve himself in the worst of what they did, but he seemed to feel it was his duty not to ignore them completely.” There's just enough light coming out the window that Valira can see Phi raise a wry eyebrow. “They're assholes. Not the worst out there, but they see people as prey, and when the king stopped pretending he did once he took the throne, they lost interest.”

“And they've attached themselves to Seath, and to a bill that says it's against corruption.” Both of them press their lips together, unhappy. It's as good as a yes. “Are they always that snide with him?”

Terry scowls. “These days, yes. Not much to be done about it if he won't tell them to stop, though.”

And of course he won't. Haoti never defends himself. And she did a poor job of defending him tonight, which only makes it worse. “I'd be happy to tell them, if I thought he'd let me.”

“I don't think he'd tell you that you should, but I also don't think he'd be unhappy to be defended,” says Phi. “Do you want to come inside, or is there more gardening to do tonight? Or we could see if Trilli is free tonight, but I think she and Quil and Cordelia were going to the movies, with the other three off to Windell.”

Valira shakes her head, and lets herself be convinced to come inside again. She's definitely muddy, but laundry or a spellcaster should take care of it. “I should apologize to him in the morning.”

“You didn't shout or throw anything at them, from what I can tell, so you're probably fine,” says Terry. “Like Phi says—I think he'd like being defended. Not enough people do it. Us probably included.”

“He's not good at letting people be his friends.”

They exchange another look, and don't bother discussing the results of it. It's not as though Valira doesn't know she's turning into a hypocrite where Haoti is concerned. “He seems to be doing better now,” Terry finally says.

“I suppose.” But he kept Lauren at a distance and laughed uncomfortably with the mass of men tonight even when the joke was on him, and she knows he doesn't agree with them. If Valira is the best new friendship he has, maybe his best outside of Kalon and Frog, who seem very busy with their own lives and their refuge, he really needs more. If he'll let himself have them. “But I'm not going to stay forever.”

“He'd be happy if you did,” Phi says, and offers a smile. “We all would. Us, and definitely Quil, and Kithri for certain, and any number of other people.”

“Maybe so. But this garden bed isn't going to take forever, and helping Quil and attending the occasional dinner party isn't enough. And sometime soon people are going to start asking why a private citizen of Tyne is staying in very nice guest quarters in the palace without a job or any position.”

“I don't think anyone whose opinion matters is going to be asking that.”

“Unfortunately, the more he disagrees with someone, the more he feels honor bound to listen to them, as far as I can tell.”

Terry shakes his head. “I don't think he'll kick you out in the cold, or even encourage you to leave. Which isn't to say you should stay if you don't want to, but at least say you're going _to_ something.”

“I'd be going to be near Trilli, and to take care of my plants and feed my cats.”

“We can't argue with that,” says Phi, but neither of them looks happy.

They spend another five minutes, asking about her plans for the next few days, and Valira does her best to see them out with a smile.

She's tempted to go back out into the garden once they've left and she's changed out of her nice clothes, but she gets her phone out instead, to text Frog, whose number she got at the visit and who has texted her twice, once a picture of one of the sheep with a bloody rib stuck in its wool and once a picture of the rats asleep in a heap of hay, both completely without commentary.

 _Haoti's 'friends' are assholes. If you or Kalon happened to call him up or visit he might like that_ , she sends after some deliberation.

She gets a reply within five minutes. _Does that definition include us? And you? Won't dispute that._ It's followed by a picture of one of the sheep thoughtfully eyeing Kalon's leg like she's looking for her next meal.

That, she decides, is a good enough answer for her. It's up to them whether they take her up on it.

*

The next day, Trilli insists on a trip to see the sights of the capitol, so Valira doesn't see much of Haoti to ask him if Frog and Kalon were ever in touch, and the one time she does see him, when they're back right before dinner, he's with Seath, and only gives her an apologetic grimace while Seath does everything but glare at her outright.

Quil hosts dinner, all of them packing into her small quarters and setting up with plates on their laps sitting all over the furniture. Despite Quil's best efforts otherwise, she ends up sitting between Terry and Phi, sharing food and whispers in between larger conversations. Valira mostly sits back, letting the three of them talk, and Cordelia and Trilli do the same, arguing about some school project and whether Star has a crush on their married professor or just a deep professional admiration, as she apparently claims.

Kithri is sitting back too, occasionally drinking from a flask and complaining that Quil didn't ask her to bring pie with a smile that assuages any of Quil's guilt. While everyone else is distracted by an affectionate argument between Quil and Cordelia about what they should give their mother for her birthday, Kithri turns a raised eyebrow on Valira. “His Majesty isn't coming tonight?”

“I think he'd probably rather you didn't call him that. And no, it looked like he was stuck with Seath.”

Kithri snorts unhappily. “That man has been in power too long. One of these days he'll start thinking he's king.”

“At this point, he probably technically has more power than the king does,” Valira points out.

Kithri just waves a hand. “Yes, but he can be voted out, thank Yondalla. Less than a year till the next big election.” She looks sidelong at Valira. “Rumor has it you're thinking of moving back south.”

Valira shrugs, feeling guilty, which is stupid. “It's near Trilli, and I can't stay here doing nothing forever.”

“So don't do nothing,” says Kithri, and turns back to the conversation like it's as easy as that.

“Valira,” says Trilli, “tell them that food is a good gift.”

Valira laughs and does her best to focus on the conversation at hand.

*

The last political dinner, the next night, isn't as excruciating as the others, even if Solomon is there. It's a collection of what Haoti refers to, with an actual smile on his face, as the “old guard,” men and women who have been in the government for years and years, a mix of conservative and liberal, but all of them friendly over dry wine and rich food, reminding Valira of her oldest uncles on her mother's side, always sitting late over dinner gossiping and asking any nieces or nephews who came in sight about their plans for the future.

Collectively, they quiz Haoti on the reform bill until Valira's head is spinning trying to follow the not-quite-arguments they're all clearly having, and when Haoti is looking cowed enough, they move on to asking Valira about equivalent measures in the Greenwoods, as though she remembers much about specific pieces of legislation after so many years gone. By the time dessert is served, she's ready to crawl into bed and not come out for a day.

“So, your Majesty,” says one of them who seems the fondest of Haoti, and also like he's a friend of Solomon's. He says “your Majesty” like he might say “my boy” if he were speaking to anyone but the king. “What's your opinion on the bill?”

“My opinion is that the parliament is voting on it and the parliament should choose their own opinions without royal interference on matters of corruption,” Haoti says, but everyone just laughs at him like it's a joke. He gives Valira an appealing look, but she has no idea how to help him, so she just shrugs and waits for him to continue. “I think, if I were a member of parliament, at the very least I would want some serious amendments before voting it into law. And no, I am not going to do your jobs for you and tell you what kinds of amendments, not over a dinner. Lady Valira will be bored out of her skull.”

“Lady Valira is a citizen of Tyne now, and may have an opinion of her own on the matter,” Solomon points out. She's not sure if she's grateful for that or if she wants to strangle him. Probably the latter. “Lady Valira? Anything to add?”

Valira frowns at him, but they're all looking at her, Haoti included, so she does her best to think over the subject. “I think, like the king, that some amendments are in order. I haven't read the bill in its entirety, but the summary I've read makes it sound like it's a lot of vague talking without anything very specific about term limits or anything like that, when everyone keeps talking about its support of term limits without actually saying what they are.”

Haoti smiles at her. “I stand corrected. Though you may still be bored. But yes, the vagueness of the bill bothers me. Anyone can say they're against corruption. I'd like to see exactly what kind of corruption we're coming out against before we start on a mess of reforms without much actionable legislation behind the admirable goals.” He stands up, and the rest of the room scrambles to do it, even Solomon. Valira is a good three beats behind everyone else, but she's the one he smiles at. “However, it's up to everyone else what amendments to introduce, if they want to move forward with this legislation. I wanted to hear everyone else's thoughts more than my own, so I suppose we'll have to set up some meetings.”

There's good-natured grumbling, but it doesn't take up much time, and soon enough Valira and Haoti are falling into step, Terry and one of Haoti's bodyguards following them down the hall. Valira turns around and smiles at Terry, and he smiles back but doesn't make a move to join them. “That went better than the other night,” she offers when they're a little way down the hall.

“Much better. They were all my teachers, in one way or another, so meetings with them tend to be more like interrogations, but they're also more willing to explain all their thought processes.” He frowns. “I think, judging by them and by the numbers Seath has been bringing me, the bill will probably pass, though there will be at least a few amendments.”

“And do you want it to?”

“No. Not really. It puts limits on my power, and Seath keeps pretending he thinks that's my sticking point, but it's more that I fear the lack of limits on his power. It's not in this bill, but it could pave the way to electing him as a personality rather than as the leader of a party, and I don't like that thought.”

“Especially if there aren't going to be specific term limits in place. Right?”

Haoti nods. “Just so. Thank you for doing this, once again.”

“This one was much better than the second. And I don't like them as much as I liked Lauren, but you were more comfortable, so it was probably better than the first too. I'll see you again for breakfast in the morning?”

After a startled moment where he slows but doesn't quite stop walking, he nods. “If you like. Will Lady Trillium be joining us?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I'm losing my shine already, she's sleeping in more. Or just preparing herself for the school term that's coming up. She's not talking about when she's leaving quite yet, but I think her friends are due back in a couple days, and it shouldn't be too long after that.”

“And have you thought more about whether you want to join her in the area?”

Of course she has, though she doesn't know how to talk about any of it. Valira has nothing to do now, not really, not in the palace and not in Alya's house. The press will always think the nursery is a good place to catch her, and she would need to drag a bodyguard behind her ever day as a result. Maybe she could manage it, but the thought is already exhausting. Not as much as staying without a purpose does, though. “At least sometimes,” she says, because she has to say something. “I want to get to know her again, and she's said that some of our cousins might visit her and I really want to see them too, all of them. I don't know if it's where I'd like to be all the time, though.”

“Well, Kalon sent me a message the other night saying he could probably pay you a pittance to shovel shit for him, if you like,” Haoti says, and gives her a sideways smile that she suspects means he knows that it's her fault Kalon was sending him messages in the first place. “He said that Frog took to you, and I can attest that he doesn't take to many people.”

“He seems to like you fine.”

“Now he does,” Haoti says, a lot easier than she's expecting. Maybe there's hope that he'll someday realize that Phi and Terry and Quil and maybe even Kithri could like him if he let them. “But it took a few years of him grumbling and me learning a lot of insults in Undercommon.”

“Teach me one,” says Valira, just to see if she can get him to smile, and grins when it works.

By the end of their walk to her room, Valira and Terry can both say at least three things of extreme rudeness in Undercommon, and even Haoti's bodyguard has started to join in. “Breakfast tomorrow?” Haoti confirms when they reach her door.

Valira thinks about inviting him in just to talk, let him talk about the bill with someone who doesn't really have any say in it, but she's tired, and he seems to be too, clenching his jaw regularly around what must be yawns. “Breakfast tomorrow,” she says, and then calls him something unspeakable in Undercommon just to make him laugh.

*

“How did your family end up scattered to the four winds?” Valira asks Quil the next afternoon while they're digging around in her shade garden, and then bites her lip when Quil pauses to give her a wary look. “I shouldn't have asked.”

Quil looks around, but it's just them in Valira's little courtyard. Trilli and Cordelia are waiting impatiently for their friends to get back to the palace, and Phi ducked inside to discuss something on the radio with someone else from security, something about an interview Haoti is having and increased press presence on the grounds. “No, I don't blame you. We grew up in the south—not on the Greenwoods border, where you've been, but over to the coast more—and my mother still lives there. Cordelia got a scholarship to school a few years back, so she went there.”

“And you?”

For a minute, she thinks she isn't going to get an answer, because Quil applies herself to vigorously turning soil over, and she almost apologizes for the question. “I almost set my house on fire when my magic was acting up, and I decided to get a job somewhere quiet and away from home.”

“Quiet. And you ended up in the palace?”

Quil spreads her hands. “Phi's fault. I was working at an orchard, keeping some bees for them and doing other work when it was the wrong time for that, and she and her siblings stopped in a few times when she was on a vacation at home, looking for apples and things to put up for the winter, and eventually she said that there was a job open in the gardens here and I should take it, because there were bees.”

“And you did?”

She shrugs. “Eventually.”

Valira wants, very badly, to ask if her assumptions about Quil and Phi and Terry are right, or going to be right, but she's asked enough personal questions for the moment, especially without answering any of her own. “You must be glad to see Cordelia, then. Has she ever visited you at the palace before?”

“No, I usually use my time off to go see both of them when she's on school vacations. This time, she beat me to it.” Quil frowns, pausing in her work. “She says Trilli talked about you a lot, at school. About hunting you down, and about how you took care of her and all the rest of your cousins.”

Valira swallows. “I liked spending time with the kids. I'm just glad she doesn't feel like I abandoned them.”

“Cordelia and I had our fights about that. But I think Trilli understands it wasn't exactly your choice to leave her.” Quil stops pretending to look at her work and meets Valira's eyes. “I still see her, even though she's almost as far away across Tyne as it's possible to get from here.”

“I don't know what I would do if I stayed,” Valira says. It's the heart of the issue. “At Alya's, I could find something better suited to me, even if the nursery might not quite work.”

Quil nods, and after a few seconds she goes back to work. “You still call it Alya's,” she finally says. “Not home.”

Valira hasn't had one of those in a long time. Even Alya's house has always felt like a temporary haven, much as she would have liked it to be a real home. “I don't know what I would do,” she says again.

Phi comes back out of the palace, letting out a sigh probably mostly to let them know they aren't alone. “Apparently a member of the press decided to take a walk in the gardens, probably looking for you, Valira, so we'll have to keep our eyes open, though you should be protected in here.” And then, looking between them: “You two look serious. Everything okay?”

“Just talking,” Quil assures her, with one of the smiles she seems to save for Phi and Terry, fond and shy and hopeful. “Trying to convince Valira to stay.”

Phi smiles back, fond and steady, and Valira looks down, feeling like she's intruding. “Well, don't let me stop you,” she says. “Even if we do have roaming journalists, it's not all bad.”

“No, it's not,” says Valira, and gets back to work.

*

Valira is already in a bad mood by the time she makes it to breakfast the next day, because almost the last thing Trilli said before leaving her the night before is that they can really only stay a few more days. Tesni and Star and Wynne are back now, after visiting Wynne's parents, and now they're itching to be moving again, restless like only teenagers can be. On top of that, apparently Wynne's parents scolded them all and told them to get back to school before classes start again, so it's not going to be long, especially with the drive they have to make.

Haoti, when she arrives, looks just as worn-down as she feels, and greets her with an unhappy “They've scheduled a vote on the preliminaries for the bill.”

“Soon?”

“A week and a half. I'm going to host a dinner for the major players the night before the vote, with some press. Tempers are high about it all, and it will do the public good to see everyone smiling and making nice. Everyone we've been having dinner with, as well as Seath and probably ten others from various sides of the issue.” He frowns. “I hate to ask, but—”

“Of course I'll come.” Valira sits down and starts dishing herself out some breakfast. It takes a minute, but he sits down after her and does the same, in silence. “I don't know why you won't just say that you hate it.”

“Because it limits my power. If I just say I hate it, people are going to say I want more.”

“And if you don't speak out, Seath gets more.”

Haoti sighs. “He was my father's advisor, colleague, and friend. I owe him the benefit of the doubt, at the very least.” When Valira just frowns, he shrugs. “I owe it to my father to treat him with respect, and to listen to his counsel.”

“Despite all your disagreements with your father?”

“At the very least, I need neutrality here. Because it's safe.” He gives her a wry smile. “I suppose I understand the Greenwoods, then, much as I don't want to.”

Valira wants to say a lot of things, few of them kind and none of them temperate, but she tries her best to understand her family's need for neutrality. She can try to understand his too, and hope that it won't bring him to grief. “I'll come to your dinner, and try not to say anything too hasty, if you're sure that's what you want.”

Haoti rubs his temples, and she feels horrible for him and anxious for herself, attending another important dinner and wanting to keep her opinion wrapped up again. “I know everything has been hard for you,” he finally says, “but Solomon found you right when I need you most, it seems, and I'm grateful to him. I'm sorry he tracked you down, because you deserved your peace, but—just know I'm glad you're here, Valira.”

“I don't think I'm helping much,” she says, frustrated. “This bill wouldn't be so difficult if I were.”

“It would be worse without you, believe me. I know you're trying to help me as much as I'm trying to help you, and I hope … well, I hope both of us are succeeding.” He looks out the window. “It's a nice day outside, and it's not supposed to rain again. Do you have plans with Trilli or your friends, or would you like to take a walk through the garden after breakfast? I haven't had a chance in a while.”

“Trilli can wait an hour or two,” Valira says firmly. “She's got her friends around, and she'll be asleep till mid-morning, probably. I'll see her for lunch, if not before, but a walk in the gardens sounds just right.”

With that ahead of them, the atmosphere around the breakfast table is much less gloomy, and Phi and Haoti's bodyguard both react with undisguised relief when they're informed of the plan. The walk itself is quiet, but Valira doesn't mind that. He leads her out to a lane of trees that used to lead to the main entrance of the palace, a hundred years back. Some of the trees have died and birthed new ones, and others are dying, but most of them are still huge and healthy, shading the whole lane, and Valira takes deep breaths, enjoying the height of them.

“I used to hide out here for hours, when I could get away with it,” he says when they reach the end of the lane, both of them reluctant to step out in the sun even when it's a little chilly in the shade. “Well, I say I was hiding, but I'm very sure that security knew where I was and kept a discreet eye on me, and my mother probably did too.”

“It's a good place to think, and to play,” Valira offers. “It's amazing it's still here, even after it stopped being the road people came by to get here. They got rid of the moat and all that.”

“Maybe my family is sentimental. I keep meaning to do something about maintaining it where it's getting a little messy, but I think I like it this way.”

Valira nods. “It's more like a forest.”

Haoti nods back with a pleased smile, like she's understood him, and they walk slowly back along the lane until they meet Trilli, Quil, and Cordelia coming out to meet them. “They said you were out this way!” says Trilli, hooking her arm through Valira's. “I just finished breakfast with everyone, and Tesni and Wynne want to go into town today, so Star is going with them, which means you're stuck with us again. Quil says we can help her check on her bees, since they're due to be looked at.”

Valira turns to Quil with a smile. “I've been hoping to see your bees again.” She cranes her neck to look at Haoti, since he's fallen behind her and Trilli. “Do you want to come along? You're welcome, if you don't have to get back to business.”

Haoti checks the time and frowns at the clock. “I have a meeting in half an hour, which I don't think is enough time to pay proper attention to the bees, so I'm afraid I'll have to say no. Good morning, everyone.”

“Morning,” says Quil, already sounding happier to see him than she did the first time Valira saw them in the same room. “We'll have to go get some supplies, since I'll need to smoke the hives a little and people who want protective gear should get some, so you're welcome to go with us that far.”

For a moment, Valira thinks he's going to say no, but then he smiles. “I'd be glad to.”

Trilli has firm hold of Valira's arm and seems bent on telling her all about how things were in Windell, but Quil falls back to chat with Haoti about the bees and the rest of the gardens and if he has any opinions on later-season plantings, and Phi draws Cordelia out a little, asking her about classes and what she does outside of them. It's a pleasanter walk than Valira is expecting, and she gets another smile from Haoti as he leaves them at the shed that holds Quil's equipment.

“How is he?” Quil asks when she's set everyone to work and Trilli and Cordelia are laughing at each other trying to get their hats and veils situated, more because they want to wear them than because they think Quil's bees will sting. “Word this morning says the vote's been scheduled, or at least a preliminary one.”

“Unhappy,” says Valira, frowning a little, “but better than he was this morning, anyway.”

“I'm glad you helped.” Quil starts shepherding them all towards her hives. “I think Cordelia and I are having family dinner in the city tonight, but the next time we all eat together, we should make sure to invite him. That should help too.”

“I think it will,” says Valira, and concentrates on the bees. It's easier than chasing around worries about the vote and Haoti's insistence on neutrality or worse, supporting Seath.

*

The next morning, when she's back in her room after breakfast and drinking a cup of tea before she puts herself to work in her shade garden, since Trilli and Tesni have plans for a bookstore in the city and Valira would rather have the peace than possibly deal with the press in town, there's a knock on her door. When she opens it, Terry is frowning, and Seath is standing behind him. His smile is oily and false and Valira wants to slam the door. “The Prime Minister to see you, ma'am,” says Terry, sounding unhappy.

“Lady Valira,” says Seath, and she hates it even more than she hates his cold and pointed “Miss Wayfinder” in front of Haoti. “Would you care to take a walk? I feel I should get to know our king's guest.”

There's really no polite way of saying no, but Valira doesn't bother pretending to smile about it. “Let's take a walk, then.” Terry looks concerned, still standing between them, but there's nothing to say while he's watching, so she doesn't try. They both know this is an unhappy situation at best, and that Seath can't have anything to talk to her about that she'll enjoy discussing. “I don't know everything around the palace and its grounds yet. You can show me something I haven't yet seen, at least not on this visit.”

“Of course.” He doesn't offer his arm, so at least there's no pretense from him, either. Instead, he starts walking, and lets her increase her stride to catch up, Terry and his bodyguard falling into place behind them. Terry seems inclined to want to walk close, but Seath's bodyguard dawdles, and eventually, when Valira tries a smile over her shoulder, he seems willing to do the same.

Seath seems to have a destination in mind, and no desire to converse until they get there, so she follows him to the public parts of the palace, which aren't open for the day yet, and to the throne room, beautifully maintained and only used on ceremonial occasions: funerals, coronations, weddings. Most times, it's a place for people to come through and take pictures, and she wants to tell him it's not as impressive as he wants it to be. She waits, instead.

“You and I,” he finally says, “both have the king's best interests in mind, I think.”

He must know that whatever he wants, he's not going to get it that way, but she plays the game to see where he thinks he's going. “Oh?”

“You seem to approve of him stretching his wings, and so do I. I just wish he'd have some caution on this bill. You've seen some of the language, I assume—you'll know that it plans to limit some of the monarch's powers and ability to influence future votes. I don't think people will like it if he speaks out against the bill, given that.”

Of course it's the bill, and of course that's the argument he uses. Valira flexes her fingers and looks at the throne. Haoti won't ever sit in it and arbitrate disputes and rule the way his ancestors did, nor should he, but that doesn't mean she thinks he should have no power at all. “I think there's plenty in the bill that could use updating and changing, and that as long as he makes it clear what parts he's hoping the parliament will amend, there's no harm in it.”

“But people will see what he's doing—”

“He's not doing it. And he would be glad to explain that to the press, if they choose to ask, I imagine.” It rankles all the more that he feels the need to have this conversation when she's seen the pains Haoti is taking to stay neutral and to think the best of Seath. “I'm not sure what you want from me. I'm a private citizen of Tyne.”

“You're a private citizen of Tyne with the king's ear. People are going to start asking about you soon too, you know. They'll forget you're a charity princess, forget taking pictures of you and your cousin, and start asking just what you're saying to King Haoti, what advice from the Greenwoods you're giving him.”

Valira snorts. “Yes, I'm well known for agreeing with the Greenwoods on policy. All I'm telling him is that he's allowed to have his own opinions and share them. He doesn't seem to realize it. Can't imagine why.”

“Of course the king should advise the government—on any issue but this. You must understand that in this instance, he's right. He must be impartial.”

“When has any politician ever been that?” Valira paces a few steps and turns around. Terry and Seath's bodyguard are standing at the door, and Terry still looks like he'd love nothing better than to grab her and tow her out of the room. “You want to ask me something. You may as well just ask.”

“I already did, Lady Valira. I asked you to remind him of his duty in this matter. You've already declined. What do you know about what's best for him?”

Valira snorts. “He's not a child. What do _you_ know?”

“You're only going to hurt him in the long run, princess. Encourage him to speak out, to get involved, and you're going to find that less and less people like him, and less and less people think that keeping the monarchy around at all is a good idea. I know he's offered you your old life back, with a few extra fences. You can have your country obscurity, and know that he's safe. Taken care of. Not going to do anything drastic that would lose him his place like you lost yours.”

Dimly, Valira manages to be grateful that he was quiet saying that, because she thinks Terry would happily have committed treason for it. She's thinking about it herself. Instead, she breathes and looks at one of the old tapestries on the wall, of an old king of Tyne. Ironically, the one Seath must be named after. He wants her to lose her temper, to ask if he's threatening Haoti, so he can be smug and superior. She won't give him the satisfaction. “I'm not his mother, or his jailer, to control what he does.”

“But you have his ear.”

“I'm his friend.” Valira shakes her head. “All I'll tell him is to follow his conscience. It's his own choice what that tells him.”

“And if Tyne decides it no longer needs a king?”

It's an effort to force herself to raise an eyebrow instead of shouting. “Then he's smart, and he'll do something else. But it will be his choice. Not mine, not yours.”

“You're making a mistake.”

“Can't convince him yourself?” Valira asks. Terry's there, so she's safe enough to needle him a little. “I can't imagine why not.”

“I can. It's you, and I know it, and the press knows it. That's the way they'll tell it.”

She's spent half her life hating the press for upending her life. That won't be anything new. She'll hate it, but she'll survive it. “I'd rather have his good opinion than yours, and the press's.” She raises her voice. “Terry, I think I need to meet Trilli. Let's go.”

“I was just about to say that she'll be waiting for you, my lady,” he says, sounding relieved, and she walks over to him before Seath can respond. He doesn't look worried, or even annoyed, just smug, and Valira decides not to care. If Tyne hates her, that's not so different to what she's seen before. She'll fade away, or she'll find somewhere else. “Are you okay?” Terry asks under his breath the second they're out of the old throne room, with some space between Seath and his bodyguard and them.

“I'm fine. He wants Haoti to come out for the bill, and thinks I'm the way to do it. There's something in it he wants, and I'm almost certain that I don't want it at all.” She scowls. “I don't know if he'll listen to me if I tell him so, though.”

“The king? If you're the one saying it, I think he'll at least try to listen, no matter what he thinks he owes the Prime Minister.” Terry offers her a tentative smile. “Trilli really will be waiting for you, though, and probably Quil too. Phi said she'd be by after running a few errands, and I think Trilli's friends were all intending to get dirty, so we'll make a party of it. Maybe we can convince Kithri to come with a picnic lunch from the kitchen.”

Valira forces a smile, and keeps it on until it doesn't feel forced anymore. “That sounds lovely. Yes, let's do that, and I'll leave the politics to worry about themselves.”

She's a private citizen, and none of this has anything to do with her. She's Haoti's friend, not his advisor, and he'll decide whatever he thinks is best. She's not going to do what Seath wants, but she can take his vague threats as a reason to be more circumspect, and Haoti will make the moral decision, not the one he feels he should make.

And she can keep telling herself that until she believes it.

*

Trilli comes to breakfast the next morning, and she looks serious, so Valira doesn't suggest joining Haoti, just sends him a message letting him know that she'll have to see him later in the day and asks her bodyguard, neither Phi nor Terry since they're off to visit her family again, this time for an overnight visit, if she'll send for a tray of breakfast.

“You want to speak to me about something?” she asks. There's no use skirting around it.

“Professor Idilus called me this morning—he's the principal at school.”

“Ah.” Trilli has to go. School is important, especially if she wants the Greenwoods not to disown her. They've already heard where she is, no doubt, since there have been some pictures of them taken, and Trilli hasn't mentioned any of them scolding her about it, but that would change quickly if she doesn't make it back in time for classes. “When do you have to go?”

“King Haoti said he'll pay for all of us and Star's car to go through a transportation circle, so it will be a fast trip, so I've got longer than I would have otherwise. They've all said we can go early the morning classes start.”

Valira swallows. “Which is?”

“Today and two more days. We'd leave the next morning after that.”

That's better than she has any right to ask for, so Valira takes Trilli's hand to squeeze it. “It's been a good visit, but school is important. I'll have to thank Haoti for letting me keep you here an extra day or two.”

“And you'll come visit?”

“Probably one of these days I'll be back in Alya's house, and then I'll be visiting every weekend and you'll get sick of me.”

Trilli frowns. “You don't have to. If you don't want to, I mean.”

Valira blinks, startled. “Of course I want to visit you. I'm so happy you found me again, and—”

“No, I mean. You don't have to come back to live in the south if you don't want to. You have friends here, and the king, and you like them all a lot. You could still come down through the transportation circle and visit me.”

Valira shakes her head. “I can't stay here forever. I'd get bored, for one thing, unless the gardens hire me like Quil keeps joking they should. If I'm going somewhere, I may as well go somewhere close to my family. Especially if any of the others are going to come for a visit and let me try to get acquainted with them again.”

“Well. Like I said. You don't have to.”

Kithri chooses that moment to arrive with a breakfast tray and a few choice words about some new hire who had the temerity to suggest a different recipe for her pie crusts, and Valira mulls Trilli's words over while listening with half an ear until Kithri decides it's time to get back to work.

When she's gone, there's silence, and Valira tries to put her thoughts into some kind of order. Of course she's going to leave the palace. She has no purpose here, and even if she did, it would put her at constant odds with Seath, and she's smart enough to see the way things are going. It would put Haoti at odds with Seath too, and that worries her more. “I really can't stay here, even if my friends would like me to. I'll stay a while longer, especially since they're still doing security work on Alya's house, but I'll be down near you before you know it.”

“I'm just saying you don't have to be. I'm graduating in a year, you know, and who knows where I'm going to university. There's a place in the Boreal Valley Tesni mentioned, and I might just see if I can go there. I want to see as much of the world as I can.”

Of course. Trilli can't and shouldn't build her life around Valira, and she should see everything she possibly can, but that leaves Valira rudderless again, no knowledge of what she should be doing. “The Boreal Valley?” she says, as lightly as she can. No use burdening Trilli with her worries. “Isn't there some kind of revolution going on there?”

Trilli waves a hand. “Oh, yes, but it will be over by the time I'm ready to go over, I'm sure.”

Valira laughs, and it seems to ring true. “Well, maybe you'd better tell me where else you're thinking of going, just in case it's not.”

Trilli rolls her eyes and heaves the sigh of a teenager who knows she's being derailed, but she chatters on about universities all over the world, from Tyne to Erelest to the Sword Coast, all the dreams she's got about what she can do there. Valira smiles, and asks questions, and tries to ignore the pit in her stomach.

*

Quil, when Valira sees her later on, looks about as happy as Valira feels, and when they give up on work for the day, all the girls camp out on Valira's bed watching a movie about some interdimensional wizard there's apparently a whole franchise about.

Valira manages to pay attention for about ten minutes before wandering away to one of the chairs in another corner of the room, where she takes out a notebook and starts doing what Alya taught her, mapping out the grids of her garden as it takes shape, so she always has a record of it. It takes Quil less than five minutes to follow her, collapsing into the other chair after checking herself for dirt.

“Trilli told you when they're leaving?” she asks after a moment, lowering her voice.

“She did. It's a longer visit than I thought I would get. Not that I thought I'd get a visit at all. And it seems to have been a good one for you and Cordelia.”

After a moment, Quil nods. “It has been. We've had our troubles, as sisters, but it's been nice having this visit, even if I wish our mother could have been here too.”

“Maybe next time she'll give you some warning, and all three of you can be here.”

“I'll hope so. With Trilli coming up here too, I might see her more often.”

“If I'm not down there.”

Quil frowns. “Visiting?” Valira shakes her head, and they lapse into silence for a few moments. “I don't want to tell you to do something that would make you unhappy, but you'd be missed, if you left. I'd miss you. We all would. Especially the king, not that he'd tell me that.”

Valira opens her mouth, but she doesn't have the words to explain everything swirling around in her head. “Nothing is happening soon, anyway,” she finally says. “There's plenty to do, and I at least want to be around until the vote on the reform bill, and, well. If he needs support after, too.”

“You're making him a better king.”

“Seath doesn't agree.”

Quil gives her a sharp look. “Terry mentioned that. Is everything okay?”

Valira shrugs. There's really nothing else to do. “As okay as it can be, when he doesn't like me.”

“Let us know if you need help. We'll do everything we can.”

Valira has never made friends easily. Even when she was young, she spent all her time with her cousins, rather than anyone else. Alya was a mentor, not a friend, and everyone else in town kept a friendly distance that she didn't know how to cross. In Tyne's palace, though, everything seems different. She's not sure what to do about that. “I know you will,” she says, and finds that it's true.

*

“I have a few free hours this afternoon,” Haoti says over breakfast the next morning, while Trilli is dozing over her flapjacks and Valira is trying not to laugh at her for it. She'd have more sympathy, but apparently she and her friends sneaked into the kitchen to make food and instead made a mess that Wynne and Tesni convinced them to clean up.

Valira drags her attention to Haoti, who seems inclined to stare out the window rather than converse this morning. “Did you want to invite me to do something? Or us, rather?”

“I actually want to be very rude and invite myself to do something with you. I've—I don't know if you know that my suite is above yours.” Valira blinks and shakes her head. “I've been enjoying watching you restore the garden. It used to be my mother's. Once she and my father started maintaining separate bedrooms, yours was hers, so she could have a garden of her own.”

Trilli looks much more awake now, and Valira is excruciatingly aware of it. “I'm honored you put me there,” she says carefully. “And you're welcome to join us, of course, if you want to garden.”

“Please don't say that out of obligation. I don't want to get in the way of your fun.”

“You can join our fun,” says Trilli, firm, but with enough mischief in her eyes to make Valira wince. “If you can call it that. Valira always liked gardening more than I did.”

Haoti smiles at her. “And I always liked it too, but I rarely have the time for it, so if I won't be underfoot, I'd love the chance to join you.”

“Of course,” says Valira. “We're doing some actual planting today, so you've picked a good time to join us.”

Once breakfast is done, the morning passes quickly. Kithri, having heard about the girls' ill-fated attempt at cooking, drags them all into her corner of the kitchen and teaches them all how to make what she calls a basic pie, though it seems to involve far too many steps for Valira's taste. At least Tesni and Cordelia both seem to take to it.

Not long after lunch, there's a knock on the door, and Valira opens it to find that Haoti and Quil have arrived at the same time, Quil looking mildly baffled and pushing a cart of the seedlings they've been discussing. “Sorry, I should have told you we have extra help today,” Valira tells her, and helps her push the cart through the room and to the shade garden.

Quil, to her credit, accepts that complete lack of explanation with grace and starts shepherding the girls into something like usefulness, since they're all hanging around. Trilli, grand and expansive, announces that she'll make some music for them to plant by and pulls out a flute and starts practicing some orchestra music for the coming term. Wynne, apologetic, says she has history homework to catch up on and sits next to Trilli to do it while the rest of them set to work.

It's a little more quiet than usual, with Haoti there, but Valira makes a point of working next to him, quietly pointing out what she wants where and asking him which windows are his, waiting for him to point up to a balcony she's never seen him use. “You could have said hello anytime,” she says, a little exasperated, when she realizes he must have just been watching out his window to see them at work.

Haoti shrugs. “I didn't want to bother you.”

“You're our friend, you couldn't be bothering us,” says Quil, and Valira could hug her for it. “Phi and Terry will be sorry that you came when they're away.”

“How is Fairpoint Hold? I don't have much control over scheduling, but I can try to put a word in if you want to get away with them next time.”

Quil gives Valira a quick glance, and Cordelia one too, though Cordelia is placing seedlings with the kind of attention that means she's trying very hard to pretend she's not eavesdropping with her hair hiding her face. Valira looks away too, because she doesn't know just the balance of explaining and teasing that any response would require. “They're both happy to see their family,” Quil says eventually, “and I really should schedule a time to go with them someday. And in the meantime, they're back tomorrow morning early, so I haven't had time to miss them much.”

Haoti asks, halting, about the sister of Phi's who went to school with him, and Quil answers warmly, and it's a little easier after that, though Valira makes a point of sticking by Haoti's side and insisting that he stays for dinner when he admits that he doesn't have any meetings for the evening as well as the afternoon. Valira stays mostly quiet while the girls argue about which classes are going to be hardest for the term and serves up the last of her favorite of Alya's tea. It seems like the right night for it, and if she'll miss the blend, tea is always better when shared with friends, so it's better than hoarding it to drink alone.

When the tea is done, Haoti is the last one left in her room, Quil shepherding the girls out with a raised eyebrow and a quirk of a smile for Valira once they've all eaten, and silence falls again, a little easier this time.

“Seath says he talked to you,” Haoti says at last, and Valira doesn't know what she was expecting, but it wasn't that.

“I'm surprised he told you,” she says honestly. “It wasn't the warmest conversation from either side. He wanted me to keep you neutral on the reform bill, and even if I had the power to do that, I don't have the inclination.”

Haoti sighs and rubs his forehead. “Seath cares a lot about this bill—he calls it his legacy, and assures me that any problems I have can easily be fixed once it's passed.”

“And have you asked him why he doesn't want to fix it before it's passed?” Valira asks, more than a little tart, and gets her answer from his silence. “Sorry. I know you respect him. But I like him less the more I know him, and this bill isn't helping.”

“I respect you too. It bothers me that you dislike him so much. I feel like I'm missing something, maybe.”

He probably is, but Valira isn't going to tell him that. What he's missing is confidence in his own opinions, and she can't hand that to him. “You have to make your own choices about it. Not his, or mine, or Lauren's, or anyone else's.”

“I also have to let wisdom prevail. My father would have supported this bill.”

“Forgive me, but you don't seem all that fond of your father, so why should you care?” Valira winces at her own indelicacy, but she's not going to take it back either, so she waits in the tense silence that follows to see what kind of answer he's going to give her.

“He's the only king I've really known,” Haoti eventually says, sounding rueful. “I don't have many examples to follow.”

Valira takes a breath and reminds herself that kindness is going to help more than irritation. “I'm sure you'll figure it out. If not with this vote, then with the next.”

His smile is mostly an echo of one. “I'm certainly trying. For what it's worth, the gardening helped, today. I forgot how much it clears my mind. Almost as good as shoveling manure at Lost Flame.”

Valira tries on her own smiles. “I'm sure Kalon and Frog would be happy to hear that, and I'm glad to provide something that helps until you can make it to them next.”

He doesn't stay much longer, claiming he has a call to make before bed, and Valira waves him off without any more attempts at advice. He'll listen or he won't. In the meantime, the best thing she can do is be his friend.

*

Trilli's last full day in the palace is miserable. Terry and Phi, back from visiting their family and full of stories and revived energy, try to make it a good day, conferencing with Kithri and Quil for a picnic in one of the more ornamental part of the gardens, but everyone is tired, and Valira wants to cling to Trilli, wants not to have even the slightest chance of losing her again.

Considering Trilli is letting herself be clung to, she might agree.

Everyone else is at least kind enough not to mention it when Trilli spends most of the picnic with her head on Valira's shoulder when usually she can't be convinced to sit still for five minutes at a stretch. When the meal is over, they start splitting off in ones and twos, off to work or, in the case of Trilli's friends, to catch up on homework, and the two of them sit there in silence for a while after the rest of them leave.

“I feel like you're going to disappear again the second I leave,” Trilli finally says.

“Not going to happen.” That's not enough of a reassurance. “I'll text every day if you want me to, and tell you where I am. At the palace, at Alya's house, anywhere else.”

“I still can't believe you just turned up after all these years.” Trilli draws her knees up to her chin. “Robin started crying when he heard. I said I wouldn't tell you but I thought I should. And they're all talking to Rowan, trying to make sure he'll let you come back when he's king again, but you know him. He's so stuffy.”

He is. Always has been. He does his duty and loves the Greenwoods so much that he kept quiet when she was cast out, and sometimes she still gets flashes of being angry at him even if she knows they wouldn't have listened to him if he'd argued. “The Greenwoods isn't my home any longer,” she says as gently as she can. “If I'm allowed, I'll come visit, and I'll be family with all of you again and happily, but after how everything went—I can't move back to the palace, be a member of the family again.”

“I know.” Trilli scowls at the ground. “I don't really want to either. Not the way things are. And you've got family here.”

Valira nudges her. “I've got _you_.”

“You know what I mean.”

She does, but knowing she's welcome and wanted isn't the same as knowing what she wants, what she can do. There's still no use for her, and she needs a purpose. “I know,” she says, and takes a deep breath. “Now, come on. We can sit around moping all afternoon, or we can check on the seedlings in my garden.”

“I pick the moping,” Trilli says with a groan, but she lets Valira pull her to her feet and doesn't complain too much about checking through all the garden beds.

Valira looks up once, and sees a shape at the balcony door. She waves, and he opens the door just long enough to wish them a good afternoon and tell them he'll see them in the morning before he goes back to whatever he was doing. When she looks back at Trilli, Trilli is very carefully looking away, a smirk on her face, and Valira doesn't know what to do about that, so she doesn't mention it at all.

*

The next morning, they meet at the transportation circle, which has Star's beaten-up old car in the middle of it and all the girls' luggage in the trunk. Everyone has found some excuse to be there, from Phi and Terry switching around their schedules so they can guard Valira at the right moment to Kithri arriving with hand pies “for the road,” and even Haoti claiming he needs to say his goodbyes to visiting royalty, though he mostly stands back and lets the rest of them exchange hugs and last-minute words.

Quil is hugging Cordelia and scolding her gently about something all at once, and Valira smiles her goodbyes to the other three girls before she turns to Trilli and gives her the firmest hug she can manage. “I'm so glad you came looking for me,” she whispers, not trusting her voice if she tries to be any louder.

“We all had a plan that the second you showed up one of us would come find you,” Trilli says, just as quiet. “It's just my luck that you turned up in Tyne so I'm closest. And you're not going to disappear on us again.”

“Never. Any time any of them comes to visit you, tell me. I'll come down to see them.”

“And I'll come up whenever I can.”

“When I'm back at Alya's house, you can come to over and do your laundry whenever you like. And Star, if you need her to drive you and I can't pick you up.”

Trilli laughs, and if it sounds a little wet, Valira isn't going to mention it. “If you end up down there, I'll take you upon it.”

Someone clears her throat very loudly. “There are classes starting in three hours, and we have an hour's drive from our circle,” Star says, and then, “What? Someone had to say it!” when someone presumably elbows her.

Valira manages to make herself let go of Trilli. “You're right, Star, you do have to make it to classes. Travel safe, all of you, won't you? And let me know how classes go today, Trilli.”

Trilli rolls her eyes. “You don't need to start asking me about my schoolwork again, I get more than enough of that from the rest of the family.” She gives Valira one more quick breath-squeezing hug and trots into the circle to stand with the rest of her friends, all of them surrounding the car, since the wizard running it said that it's easier to get them through if they're all standing instead of sitting inside something in the circle. “Bye! Love you!”

“Love you,” Valira says over the sound of everyone else saying their own last goodbyes, the girls all collecting in the circle and the rest of them making sure they're clear of it while the wizard starts the spell.

Trilli blows one last kiss before she, the rest of the girls, and the car all disappear like they were never there, and Valira shakes her head against the pressure change that always comes with being in a room people just teleported out of. Everyone else is quiet with the sudden departure, and after a second, Valira looks around the room. Too many of them are in a hurry to look away.

“We should have breakfast,” she says, because someone has to say something. “All of us. I don't think any of us had time before we had to meet, so we should do it now. Kithri, can we?”

“Should be delivered to your room within twenty minutes,” says Kithri, all smugness for having anticipated Valira's request. “Enough for all of us.”

Everyone agrees, Haoti a little more hesitantly than the others. Quil is blinking away tears, Phi and Terry talking quietly to her, and Valira lets them bring up the rear when she starts herding everyone else out. By the time they get back to her room, Quil seems a little more cheerful and there's a whole cart of breakfast waiting for them to lay it out.

It's a quiet meal, but a companionable one too, and Valira lets herself relax into it as well as she can, smiling and showing everyone the text Trilli sends when they're on the road, her and Cordelia and Wynne in the backseat of the car, squished together and all of them covered in pie filling.

“Valira, if you don't have other plans, I have something I'd like to show you in the garden,” Haoti says eventually, when they're all sitting over their plates, not quite willing to admit that they're done. “I have a meeting with Seath later, but if you don't mind—”

“Of course not.” Valira looks at Quil, who should know what's going on if it's related to the garden, and finds her ducking her head with a smile on her face. She does know, then. “Let's go now, if nobody else minds, so you have plenty of time before your meeting.”

Terry makes a show of groaning his way to standing. “I'll come along—I have her for now, Phi, you help Quil and Kithri clean up, then do whatever you like. I'll radio you when we're coming inside.”

Phi smiles at him. “I shouldn't let you, but I think it's safe enough. See you in a while, you three. Quil, I'll walk you out to the bees once we've cleaned up, if you like.”

Valira, Haoti, and Terry leave while they're still discussing it, Haoti's bodyguard falling in behind them as well. He's one of the familiar faces who hasn't introduced himself yet but who seems less stone-faced than some of the others, one of the older ones who might have been on Haoti's father's security detail before he died. Considering Haoti's father, though, it's hard to tell whether he should be trusted or not.

Haoti leads them to an out-of-the-way corner of the kitchen's herb garden, and a newly-planted row of seedlings, and Terry and the other bodyguard fall back and let them have their privacy as they go over to them, Haoti looking more nervous the closer they get. “I wanted to have these ready the day Trilli left. It's not as much comfort as you deserve, but it was all I could think of.”

Valira doesn't recognize the plants, and frowns down at them. “What are they?”

“Smell them.”

After a dubious moment, Valira crouches down and rubs a leaf between her fingers before she smells it. And there, delicate and herbal and just a little sweet, is the smell of Alya's tea, the plant she never thought to ask her about, that never grew in Alya's garden. She inhales again, sharp, and then looks up at him. “The tea. How did you find it? How did you _know_?”

“You used it up, and you said it was your favorite and you didn't know what was in it, so I did some research.”

“How? I didn't even know the name of the plant, and you found half a dozen of them on no notice at all.” She swallows and looks down at the ground again, at the plants growing strong, there for her to harvest from them when they've had more time to grow and make into tea of her own.

“You deserved a piece of home.” He crouches next to her, smelling it himself. “I asked my mother,” he says when she can't muster up more words, and he couldn't have said anything that would shock her more. “She grew up closer to the tropics, she knows different plants, ones from different regions. I described the tea, and the plants in your garden so she would know what kind of soil you had and why it might not grow, and she told me what she thought it was, so I found some, and smelled it. I'm glad I was right.”

“And it will grow here?”

“She thinks there must have been too much shade, at the edge of the woods. It needs full sun. And covering from frost, when that comes, but Quil knows how to care for them, and so do I. They'll survive, and you'll have plenty of tea. Even if I have to ship you the leaves to dry and mix.”

A hug would no doubt startle him, but she reaches out and grabs his wrist, holds on. “Haoti, thank you. Alya loved this tea, and saved it for special occasions, and I never thought to ask her about it until she was gone. It's … no, it doesn't make up for Trilli leaving. But it's still incredible.”

“You're welcome. It seemed like the least I could do.”

Valira shakes her head. “You've done more than the least for me since the beginning of this.” He makes a disagreeable noise, and they crouch there in silence for several more seconds. “You called Queen Aredhel. How is she?”

“Mother is well. She was … happy to hear from me, I think.” She hates how unsure he sounds about it. “Glad that I was calling her with a gardening question. We're invited to visit her soon.” He pauses. “She asked me about the bill.”

“Taking a side?”

“Why wouldn't she? Everyone I respect is. Why would she be any different?” By the end, Haoti is snapping, but when she doesn't respond, he ducks his head, sheepish, and continues more calmly. “The bill has important provisions. Including the ones that limit the power of a king, because I might not intend to use the loopholes there currently are to seize back power, but my children or grandchildren might not agree. It just doesn't have enough that limits Seath. The question is if I trust him as far as I trust myself.”

“If he's not thinking ahead to the Prime Ministers in twenty or fifty years, the ones who come after who might not be scrupulous, like you're thinking about your own legacy, well … that says something.”

“I know. But I know it's going to be hard for me if I come out against him and the people who support him.” He throws her a quick look before he goes back to looking at the plants. “And you. He'll make things uncomfortable for you. He knows you're a weak spot.”

Of course she is, with her history of indiscreet speaking. Haoti is trying to protect himself with the respect of people on all sides, and here she is, a danger to that. “I'll do my best to make sure he can't use me. Even if that means leaving.”

“I hate that I'm even worrying about it. He's the Prime Minister, I shouldn't be working against him. He was elected, I wasn't.”

“He's a dick,” Valira says, as frank as she can be, and he huffs out a laugh and doesn't disagree. “And you're mostly not. I'll do whatever you need me to do. Shut up, keep reminding you that you don't have to go along with whatever he wants, it's up to you.”

“I'm not going to silence you, or send you away if you don't want to go.” Haoti groans. “I'll talk to Lauren again, and her side, see what they have to say about things. And you'll still come to the dinner the night before the vote? I know it will be awful, but less awful with you there. I hope.”

It will be awful, but he's trying when she can't really ask him to. The least she can do is go to one more party. “I never said I wasn't planning to come. If you need me there, I'm there.”

After a moment, he stands up. “Then I'll see you there. Thank you.”

Valira laughs, startled, and follows his example. “Thank me? For what? I should be thanking you. I still can't believe this tea.”

“For reminding me not to be a dick,” he says, wry, and sketches out an old-fashioned bow. “I have to go to my meeting.”

“I'll see you later, then,” says Valira, and waves him off with a smile before she crouches back down to look at the tea plants again. The smell when she indulges in another crushed leaf makes her close her eyes and sigh, and when she opens them again, he's almost out of sight, his bodyguard in tow. Terry, standing at the far edge of the garden bed, is smiling.

*

“Thank you for whatever you did with the tea plants,” Valira tells Quil later, when she's found her and Phi near the bees, searching for a location for new hives, since it seems like there's a swarm imminent.

“It wasn't much. I received a delivery and planted about half of them when he got called away on important international business.” Quil smiles at her sidelong. “It seemed like he wanted to be the one doing it. It wouldn't have been as much of a present otherwise.”

“It was enough of a present no matter who did the planting. How are you doing without Cordelia?”

Quil shrugs. “I'm sad she's gone, but I always know where she is, and we text and call a lot. It's different. And you and Phi and Terry are helping. Like I hope we're helping you.”

“You are. And Haoti is.”

“Good.” Quil hands her one end of a tape measure and sets about measuring to see if a hive will fit in a wedged space between a pair of trees. “I've never seen him do anything for anyone like he keeps doing for you. Setting your house up if you want to go to it, planting that tea for you.”

Valira rolls her eyes. “It's not that he wouldn't have for anyone—”

“I know that. But he likes doing it for you. I'm glad he's got you now, that's all I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to say he isn't a good person. And I know you're doing things for him you're not excited about, like going to this stupid dinner. So I guess I'm glad you have each other.”

“Here's a place,” Phi calls from the other side of the trees. “There are still some bricks here, I think it must have been used for a hive a while ago, so it could be used again.”

Valira looks at Quil and finds her smiling, already moving forward. “Looks like Haoti isn't the only one who likes giving people things.”

“I never said he was,” says Quil, and goes to see the site of her new hive.

*

When Valira arrives at breakfast the next morning, in a good mood after a grumpy text from Trilli about having to get used to waking up in the mornings again and Wynne waking her up ten minutes early in their shared room by falling out of bed, Haoti looks ready to fall asleep in his oatmeal, and Solomon is sitting at the table. “Good morning,” she says, wary, and looks between them. “Am I interrupting a meeting?”

“No.” Solomon gets halfway out of his chair. “I'll go if you like.”

Haoti still looks upset, and Solomon looks anxious enough that he's probably trying to help, so Valira shakes her head. “No, stay. What am I missing?”

“We're just talking strategy about the reform bill, with three days between today and the vote,” Solomon says, sitting back and looking a little wary about it. “Who to talk to, what to say to the press when they ask, that kind of thing.”

“The Prime Minister and I had a talk last night,” says Haoti, sounding just as exhausted as he looks. “He still thinks the bill is the best—the only—way to move forward, and the more I read about it, the less I like it, so we're at an impasse. I won't exercise my right to cast a vote on the matter, it's a terrible precedent with a bill like this, but that leaves me without many other options.”

“Just trying to convince people, and that won't be easy,” says Solomon. “If they took the vote tomorrow, I think it would pass, by a narrow margin, so that's not a lot of time to change minds.”

And Haoti has been dining with members of the parliament, but asking them to convince him, rather than trying to convince them when she suspects his mind has been made up on how he feels about the bill for weeks. “I'm not a politician. I can't really advise you. But if there's anything I can do, let me know.”

Haoti opens his mouth, no doubt about to tell her that all he needs is her presence at the dinner, but Solomon talks over him, eyes narrowed like he's assessing her. “You're a citizen now. That gives you the right to attend today's hearings about the bill. Just go. Talk if you like. Show your allegiance. People know the king listens to you.”

Valira winces, because Haoti doesn't look very pleased about that, and addresses herself to him. “Do you think that will help you? I can do it, but not if it's going to hurt you.”

“I honestly don't know.” He sits back in his seat. “Not overtly, maybe, but Lauren Gaford asked me what you thought of it all after our dinner, since you'd been quiet about the politics of it. Her, people like her, they might think that one of us has influenced the other.”

“I don't want them to think that. We both have our opinions, and I think they're the same, but I won't take responsibility for yours, and you could take responsibility for mine but only because you provided the information.”

Solomon's mouth quirks. “You could tell them that.”

“I'm not speaking for Haoti,” she says. “I'll go to the meeting, and if people ask me questions, I'll answer, but that doesn't seem like it will help, to me. It just means people making assumptions.”

“I can weather some assumptions,” says Haoti. “And I don't know if it will help, but if it gets any of the moderates looking to Lauren's side, it can't hurt.”

Valira frowns between them, unsure and less than pleased at Solomon's pushing, but neither of them tells her anything that will make up her mind for her. “I'll probably go,” she says at last, and then makes sure she's only addressing Haoti when she continues. “If you decide it's not wise at any point, tell me. I'll leave, or avoid going in the first place.”

“It's your choice, Valira. You can get involved in politics, or you can go to the gardens. I don't care, as long as you want to be doing it.”

Valira still doesn't know what she wants to do, but she can't spend every day in the garden. Seath won't be happy to see her observing a parliamentary session, but that's more an attraction than a problem, as far as she's concerned. “I know. I don't feel like you're pushing me.” Even if she can't say the same for Solomon. “I just want to make sure that I'm helping you and not harming you.”

“Right now, I don't know what to do. If there's a chance that you going could help, I'm not going to stop you.”

With that said, breakfast is quiet, and not very pleasant when Solomon is there too, but Valira does her best, talking about Quil's new hive and Trilli's first day of classes until she wins a smile out of Haoti.

*

Parliament is buzzing with excitement and debate when Valira slips in that afternoon, Phi and Terry on her heels. They didn't precisely look happy to not be spending another quiet day in the gardens, but they didn't tell her it was a bad idea, either, and Valira promises herself that she'll make sure they get more than a few days in a row off soon, and that she'll do her best to get Quil some time at the same time.

The stands for people watching are mostly empty, as Valira might have expected. There are a few bored journalists, a few of whom perk up at the sight of her, and a few bored citizens, one of whom frowns like Valira looks familiar, but mostly it's just parliament arguing about the bill, occasionally stopping the official debate so that there can be a lot of smaller ones instead.

One of Haoti's teachers is the first to recognize her, from their dinner, and gives her a surprisingly friendly wave, so Valira does her best to smile back and look attentive even though it mostly sounds like Seath is brow-beating the assembly into voting his way. After that, word seems to pass that she's there, and on the next break, one of Haoti's “friends,” the one in parliament, approaches her with what he must think is a charming smile. “If it isn't Haoti's princess. What are you doing here, my lady?”

“I'm not a princess. I'm a citizen of Tyne, and I never had your government classes in school, so I'm educating myself on the political system.”

“Well, I'm more than happy to educate you.” Of course he's the kind of man to leer at a woman the second she's away from what he deems another man's protection. If Valira had anything large enough to hand, she'd club him in the head with it. “Here to support the reform bill?”

“I'm a private citizen and don't actually yet know who my representative here is, so I can't really support or detract from anything.”

“You and I both know that's not true.”

“Miss Wayfinder, I heard you were here,” says Lauren Gaford, with the air of a person coming to the rescue. Valira certainly feels rescued. “I've been hoping to get to talk to you again since our dinner. Not enough women in this palace.”

Valira smiles at her and does her best to ignore what's-his-name, who fades resentfully into the background of the conversation. “I agree, though I've found a few nice ones.”

“You're here about the bill?”

“It seems to be the most important thing on the floor right now.”

Lauren snorts. “I suppose you could say that.” Her smile is tense at best. “What do you think so far? You were quiet during dinner with the king, but I'm interested to know your position, as an immigrant used to a different way of governance.”

“I think reforms can't hurt—even Haoti agrees that not every monarch is going to be disinterested in exploiting loopholes, so those should be closed. I just don't know about _these_ reforms. Where they're not vague, I tend to disagree with them.”

“Exactly,” says Lauren, grimly pleased, over an attempted objection from Haoti's “friend,” still standing nearby. “If Seath wanted real reforms, the kind that won't be dangerous and open to power grabs, he had his chance a year ago.”

Valira frowns. “He what?”

Lauren opens her mouth to answer, but Seath is calling the parliament back to order, another oily speech on his lips, and all the representatives return to their seats.

Valira stays another hour, listening to the arguments and how smoothly Seath keeps the opposition from being able to make any, and leaves disquieted, but knowing she's been watched and knowing that at least one person from each side knows at least in vague terms how she feels about the bill. The question is just if it's going to help at all.

*

Valira isn't really surprised when Seath finds her in the garden the next day. She begged off breakfast with a headache and wants to be as alone as she can be in the fresh air, so of course he intrudes on the closest thing to solitude she has, being trailed around by another bodyguard on her team, with Quil off working in a team with several other gardeners, none of whom Valira knows and who she doesn't feel up to meeting quite yet.

“I was pleased to see you showing an interest in our political proceedings yesterday,” he says by way of an opening sally, and it's such a blatant lie that it's hardly a lie at all.

It's only polite to respond in kind. “You're very kind to say so. You've been such a help to me.”

“Rumor has it that you disapprove of my bill.”

“Does it really matter?”

“Of course it does. I thought I made it clear that you have no place in this.”

Subtlety is out the window, then. That's fine. “I know you think Haoti is weak and can't make his own decisions, but you must not know him very well. If we share an opinion, it's a happy coincidence. Or we've just seen more than most do, about you.” She tilts her head, wondering how many cards to play, but she's never been good at holding back. “I hear you had a chance at some political reform a year ago, but there aren't records of it. What happened there?”

“Some legislation that wasn't ready to see the parliament floor. This is much better.”

“For who?” Valira shakes her head. “I don't think you and I are going to agree on this, Prime Minister.”

“If you aren't going to agree, stay silent. It's the responsible thing to do.”

Valira doesn't really care for that line of argument, so she picks another one. “What did Lauren Gaford mean when she said you had your chance at reform a year ago?”

Seath scowls and grabs her arm. Out of the corner of her eye, Valira can see her bodyguard taking a threatening step forward, and she shakes her head. “That's not any of your business.”

“If I'm a citizen of Tyne, yes it is.”

“No bills made it to the parliament floor a year ago preaching reform. So no, none of it is your business.” He releases her. “Be careful, princess. You only have so much goodwill to spend. And so does he.”

“Don't make threats,” Valira says, exasperated, and thinks of Alya saying just that when there was a neighbor trying to steal their land. She followed it up then with “take action,” but Valira isn't going to advise Seath to do anything of the sort. “It makes it look like you think I'm a threat to you,” she adds instead. “And that shouldn't be true. Me, a woman with no power at all, and you the Prime Minister? I'm just asking a question about a past bill before I was naturalized. You're the one looming over me.” She tilts her head at her bodyguard. “And he'd say that, I'm sure.”

Seath looks like he wants to take her head off, but Valira stands her ground. He won't do anything here, and she doubts he'd try to hurt her anyway. Discredit her, maybe, but she's been discredited before. That's not as much of a threat to her as he thinks it is. He scared her more the other day when he was threatening Haoti. “I'm not making threats,” he says. An obvious response. “I'm registering my concern. This bill is against backroom dealings and non-elected people swaying votes, and here you are, at the center of it, encouraging him to be more forward.”

“Lauren Gaford has no fondness for kings, I suspect, but she's against your bill.”

“Lauren Gaford is young and naïve. As are you. Princess.”

Valira shakes her head. “We're both going to do what we're going to do, here. I've already told you I'm not Haoti's keeper. I don't know what more you want from me.”

“You're going to get a reputation for being political poison.”

“Maybe so, but that's none of your concern, is it? And Haoti can make his own mistakes.”

“So it seems.” Seath takes a few steps away and turns around. “I'm not going to let you make this a problem for me.”

“All you can do is make ineffectual threats. I'm not very worried,” she says, and starts walking away herself. She doesn't bother turning around. All he can do is spit poison and hope she'll take it seriously.

*

Valira is invited to dinner in Phi and Terry's rooms that night, and goes gladly, after a mostly boring day. When she arrives, though, everyone else is already there, seated and solemn in a way that makes her think it isn't going to be a fun dinner.

Phi takes the lead. “King Haoti will be here in half an hour—we thought you'd like it if he could join us—but we wanted to warn you what's in the wind first.”

“Thank you for inviting him, and I hope it's not just for my sake.” None of them answer. Valira sighs and sits down. “Fine, tell me. Seath was blustering at me this morning. Has he done more than blow hot air?”

Kithri pushes a tablet across the table with headlines brought up on it. “He's blown it at the conservative press.”

There's a smug headline blaring, over a picture of her with Haoti at the press conference they gave, reading _CHARITY PRINCESS A DANGEROUS INFLUENCE ON INEXPERIENCED KING?_ The article itself takes joy in dragging up Valira's past, dwelling on her being disowned for her political views, and after it are a few others, all in a similar vein. When Valira looks up from them, everyone is watching her solemnly. “The rest of the press is refusing to report it, or reporting the reporting rather scathingly,” Terry offers. “But someone is trying to discredit you. Probably the Prime Minister.”

“Of course he is. Lauren Gaford said something yesterday about a bill from last year that would have done the reforms Seath said he wants. Do you know anything about that?'

They all exchange looks, frowning. “Bills aren't public until they make it to the floor for debate,” Phi finally says. “If it got killed when they were still trying to get sponsors for it, we wouldn't have heard of it. That's interesting, though.”

“Are you okay?” Quil asks, frowning at Phi. “That's the important question. This is just a small sliver of the press, and we wouldn't have told you except we thought you'd probably want to know. Mostly you're not a factor at all.”

Valira tries out a smile. “It's fine. I'm glad to know it, and I'm glad it's not everyone. A few more days and the vote will be over one way or another and Seath and I can leave each other in peace. I just have to survive until then.”

Nobody looks happy about it, but nobody argues with her either. Maybe they see that she's not up for arguing. “We just wanted you to know,” Phi finally says. “Quil was telling us about some cold-blooming flower from the Boreal Valley that Tesni told her about that she's trying to source as a winter crop.”

Valira's smile gets a lot more real, with that as a temptation. “Please, yes, tell me all about that.”

By the time Haoti knocks twenty minutes later, they've all shaken off some of their serious mood, and the levity is needed to balance out the wan smile that he barely tries at when he's through the door. “Thank you for inviting me,” he says immediately, looking around at all of them. “I'll try my best to be good company.”

Kithri scoffs. “You have the first important vote of your kingship in a few days, I'd say you've got plenty of reason to sit back and listen.”

“I'm happy to do that as well,” he says, relaxing a little.

Valira taps the chair next to her. “Sit down, then. Quil is talking about garden imports and what the palace's honey would taste like if the bees could safely harvest in winter.”

“That sounds like exactly what I need,” says Haoti, and sits down next to her.

*

When the evening ends, Kithri goes back to her room, and Valira and Haoti leave Quil in Phi and Terry's, since she seems to be in no hurry to leave.

“The press,” Haoti starts when they're only a few steps down the hall, bodyguards falling in behind them.

Valira shakes her head. “They told me. You don't need to worry about it. They were bound to latch onto it sometime.”

“And they choose to do it when my security team tells me Seath accosted you this morning?” Valira ducks her head and makes sure her sleeve is pulled down. Seath's grip is strong, for a politician. “The more I hear about how he acts with you, the more I think I should worry less about his opinion—Valira, if he hurt you—”

“It's no matter. You have enough to worry about with him this week. Don't go spending your political currency on me.”

Haoti shakes his head. “No, this is important. I can't let him assault my guests because he thinks he can control me through you, and especially—”

“No, Haoti. I'm fine. Everything is going to be fine. The vote will happen, one way or the other, and whatever the next issue is, I won't be involved in it.”

They make it down a few hallways in silence, just their footsteps and those of their bodyguards behind them, at a discreet distance. “The arcanists I have putting up security around your house say the wards are taking well,” he finally says. “Another week, and some of your magic in some hedges, and I think you can go. If you want to.”

Valira clasps her hands and thinks of Alya's cottage, so far from all these problems. So far from all her friends. “It would probably be … smart. Seath and I are going to keep butting heads. And he'll keep trying to use us against each other, hoping that one of these times it will work.”

“I don't care if it's smart. I only want you to leave if you truly want to go. Otherwise, you stay as long as you like. I'll be glad to have you. We all will. I thought about saying this at dinner, but I'm afraid Kithri would have scolded me for making it easier on you to leave. The rest of them would have just looked upset.”

Which is bad enough, Valira has discovered. Phi and Terry could probably disarm an assassin just by being disappointed in them, and she dreads the day she does something to make Quil look resigned and sad, which she lapses into far too often. “We can't have that.” When she looks at him, Haoti is frowning. “I don't know. I love that house, and I want to be near Trilli, but I would miss it here too. I still don't know what I want to do.”

“Nothing has to be decided tomorrow. Or even the day after that.” Except that the day after that is the party, and the day after _that_ is the vote, with Seath trying to undermine them both for the crime of having an opinion, but Valira has had her fill of talking about that for the moment. Haoti seems to agree, because he shakes off his frown and looks at her. “For what it's worth, I'm hoping you'll stay. We'll find something you want to do.”

“I know. As soon as I figure out what that is.”

“I don't know what I want to do, either, as king or as myself. At least you'll be in good company.”

Valira smiles, and does her best to truly shake off the mood of the day. “I really will be.”

*

The day before the dinner dawns overcast and chilly, and Valira wakes with a headache throbbing behind her eyes and gives serious thought to telling Haoti she can't come to breakfast and going back to sleep. Instead, she hauls herself out of bed, puts on an old sweater that's too ratty to do anything but garden in, and goes up to breakfast, where Haoti is frowning at his tablet and thankfully alone. Valira can't stand too much of Solomon.

Haoti gives her a brief smile when she comes in and gestures for her to sit. There's some kind of egg and vegetable scramble on the plate that smells savory and delicious, and she dishes herself some while she waits for him to finish whatever it is he's doing. “More of the conservative press is saying you have undue influence on me and are encouraging a stronger monarchy like the Greenwoods.”

Valira rolls her eyes. “Goes to show they haven't studied much about me or the Greenwoods. What's the rest of the press saying? The reasonable part?”

“Not much, which is only serving to make the conservative press smug.”

“Wonderful.” Haoti goes back to staring at his tablet, and she kicks him under the table and then has to hide her smile at the way he jumps and then scowls at her. “You sitting here staring at it isn't going to change anything. I don't like it either, but they'll lose interest in me soon. Especially if we ignore them.”

“You ignoring the press is part of the reason they love hunting you down so much,” he points out, but he still seems drained and upset, so she doesn't let herself get offended. After a moment, he puts the tablet down, face down, and starts dishing out his breakfast. “You're right, though, that there's not much we can do about it before this particular vote, anyway.”

“We'll just have to see how things go tomorrow night.”

Haoti doesn't look hopeful about it, but he talks about the guest list—almost the whole of parliament, as far as she can tell, and some of the press, since it's technically a dinner Seath is hosting. She'll be seated with him, he insisted on that, but Seath is spiteful, and Valira imagines he'll find some way of making things difficult for them. She doesn't say that, though, since it won't help.

Breakfast is short, since he apologetically tells her that there's business he needs to start taking care of, so Valira goes out to her shade garden and starts working, Phi and Terry keeping watch over her and Quil showing up eventually, probably summoned by the other two.

“We were going to have dinner in town tonight,” Phi says after a long day of little conversation. Valira knows she's not doing anyone any good except maybe her garden, but none of them seem inclined to complain. They converse, and none of them seem to mind when she contributes and when she doesn't. “You're welcome to join us if you like. We can keep you safe.”

Valira shakes her head. “I know you can, but I wouldn't be able to enjoy it. Too nervous about tomorrow.” And everything after it. “You three have fun, and I'll ask you about it tomorrow, since I won't be getting any good gardening in before the dinner.”

Quil frowns at her. “You're sure. You really are welcome.”

“I know I am. But I think I should just have a quiet dinner in my room and rest up for tomorrow. I'm not always fond of large crowds, so I want to be prepared.”

All of them nod in a ragged chorus of sympathy, and Terry smiles at her. “We will take you out one of these nights, though. You've barely left the palace since you came, other than with Trilli or going off to shovel manure at Lost Flame. A good dinner with other adults is just what the doctor ordered.”

“I'll take you upon it,” Valira promises, and all of them smile.

Valira has her quiet evening, after that, with a tray delivered by no one she knows since it's Kithri's day off and she's disappeared out of the palace with few words about where she's going. Trilli texts her about classes and about their cousins, all of whom have been asking her a dozen questions each about Valira and how they can manage to see her. Valira tells Trilli that she can hand out her phone number, but nothing comes of that right away, and she doesn't blame them being wary.

She takes care of her few plants brought from Alya's house, but they're all thriving in the palace, where Quil will take a dead leaf from the geranium when she sees one, where Kithri will absently mist the leaves of the citrus tree and Haoti always gives a little drop of water to the valerian as he passes it. She's never had plants get well so fast before, and she doesn't know what that means, or what it can mean. She can't make the palace into a nursery. Aredhel did, at least a bit, but she's not the queen. She's just herself, and still doesn't know what that means. If she's going to hurt Haoti's political clout rather than help it, she can't stay, but going back to Alya's house and her quiet life no longer seems quite as right as it did just a few weeks ago.

*

The clouds persist the next day, when Valira wakes up to a text sent an hour before dawn from Haoti telling her that he's too busy running around for breakfast.

Quil joins her for breakfast in her room, cross-legged on the bed with the door shut between them and Valira's morning bodyguard, and tells her all about dinner with a smile on her face that she can't think is hiding anything at all about her feelings. “Sounds like it might be good I didn't come with you after all,” Valira says when Quil runs out of steam.

Quil laughs a little, and shrugs. “We would have liked it if you were there, too, but I can't say I didn't have fun.”

“You can tell me not to ask if you like, but are the three of you … I mean, I know it's going somewhere. Is it already there?” Valira winces at her own phrasing, but Quil doesn't seem upset, so she doesn't retract it.

“Not the way you mean, I don't think,” says Quil, frowning a little as she thinks it through. “We haven't talked about it in so many words, but … well, I think they're waiting on me to be sure it's okay, and I don't know how to take the last step, so nothing has come of any of it yet.”

Valira wants to ask how that feels, to have that kind of surety, some kind of fixed point in the future, even if everything else is unpredictable, but it's an unanswerable question and she knows it. “Well, when it does, let me know so I can be the first to congratulate the three of you. And see about getting you all a week off.”

Quil laughs. “I'll see what I can do about that.”

*

Quil can't stay long, and Valira is left alone for most of the day, too restless to be much good to Quil and too wary of running into Seath to want to go wandering. She works in her shade garden, which is starting to show the results of her hard work, and she texts with Trilli, who claims that one of the girls in her dormitory has made a poster of Valira to hang on her wall and says she's going to be the next queen, but for the most part, she reads the news, everything she can find about everyone who will be attending the dinner.

“This is horrible,” she tells Phi and Terry when they knock on her door an hour before she's supposed to go to meet Haoti in his office to go to the dinner to let her know they're coming on shift. “Why does anyone do this?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” says Terry, and gets a very unsubtle elbow to the side and a fond look that belies it. “You're going to do fine,” he adds, which would be more comforting if he'd started with it.

“We're going to be right there at the edge of the room if anything goes wrong,” Phi promises, which is more comforting, “but honestly, nothing should. These things are mostly boring, everyone trying to show willing and pretend they're all friends even if they're going to start yelling on the parliament floor as soon as anyone calls for a vote tomorrow. Some people will like you, some won't, but it's just one night, and Haoti will appreciate your support.”

“If I don't say something impolitic and get him in trouble.”

They exchange a look. “I think you're smart enough to choose your moments,” Terry says. “If you say something, I believe it needs to be said.”

“I really can't. The way the press is talking about me, and with Seath already out to get me, I can't risk Haoti's position.”

“You're going to be fine,” Phi says, firm and comforting. “And if you need us, like I said, we're there. We'll get you out if you need to be gotten out. The second you wave at us, we'll get you out as fast as we can. I promise.”

Valira massages her temples and tries to pretend she doesn't think she'll need the contingency. “Okay. Can you come inside and help me do something about my hair?”

“That sounds like my kind of job,” says Terry, and the two of them usher her inside and help her get ready and let her pretend, for a few minutes, that the dinner is an event she wants to go to.

*

Haoti looks like a king when she gets to his office, the kind of royal appearance that only comes out for important events, crown and all, when she hasn't seen him wear his yet. He also looks tense and unhappy, but she can't blame him for that, and he still gives her a weary smile when he sees her and says “You look lovely. Shall we go deal with this and hope it's not as terrible as we both fear?”

“Phi and Terry have said they'll get me out if I give them a wave. Want to set up a signal for you as well?”

“I think my own bodyguards would get jealous if I was so partisan.” He smiles over her shoulder to the office doorway, where the collection of their bodyguards is melded together and waiting for them to leave. “Hello, agents. I hope tonight will be dull for your sakes.”

“Boring nights on duty are the best kind,” says Terry, dropping his professional demeanor for a grin, and Haoti's bodyguards look scandalized before relaxing when Haoti smiles at him. “Shall we go, your Majesty? Sounds like it's getting busy down there.”

Haoti offers Valira his arm. “Shall we, then?”

Valira takes it. “Let's do this. Maybe it will all go the way we want it to.”

“Maybe it will,” he says, without much hope, and leads the way.

Valira visited the large assembly room once when she was younger and visited Tyne with her parents, when they all first thought what an advantageous marriage it would be. Then, she and Finch, who was keeping her company, slid on stockinged feet on the cold smooth floors. Haoti joined them then, and pushed Valira over once but at least was gentle with Finch, who was too small to know how to fall. It's in the public part of the palace, the historic part, and now it's covered in tables and chairs instead of echoingly empty, but the floor is still smooth tile, easy to slip and slide on, covered over rough-hewn stone centuries ago when one of the kings had a fancy to get his whole court dancing.

“Do you remember coming here?” Haoti asks under his breath when they come in, the focus of an uncomfortable amount of attention and camera flashes.

Valira tries her hardest to smile at him, since he's trying to make her feel better. “I remember you pushing me over.”

“My mother wasn't pleased over that, let me tell you. I know better now. Don't worry, I'll keep you on your feet tonight,” he promises, and then there's a stranger, and an introduction, and the dinner begins in earnest.

Before the meal is served, the evening is an endless blur of faces, most of them strange to Valira, other than a passing glimpse in the palace hallways. The people she does know she mostly dislikes—Haoti's old “friends” chief among them, a laughing group with one long-suffering woman among them, the wife of one of them who probably won't stay with him very long if the speaking look she gives Valira is any sign of it.

Lauren Gaford, thankfully, finds them only a few minutes before dinner is due to be served with a woman on her arm and a smile on her face. She shakes Haoti's hand and then Valira's, and then gestures to the woman beside her, who has a press pass around her neck. “I don't think I've introduced either of you to my wife yet. This is Vesta, and she's a journalist with the city paper.”

“You are off the record right now,” Vesta assures them, shaking their hands. “Unless you want to tell me something particularly interesting, that is.”

“I think we're trying our hardest not to be interesting tonight,” says Valira.

Vesta looks a little pitying. That's fine. Valira probably deserves some pity. “You, anyway, are one of the most interesting people in the room,” she says. “But I do see what you mean. Your Majesty?”

“Nothing to say at the moment. Seath and I will make our speeches tonight—and Lauren, you're spokeswoman for the opposition party, aren't you?”

Lauren gives him a little bow. “I am. I'll look forward to hearing what you have to say.”

When they move on, Valira waits until they can carve out a little space in the crowd and draws Haoti aside. “You're giving a speech?”

“Only a formality, as a supposedly neutral arbiter. Seath first, then me, then Lauren. I have a very diplomatic prepared statement.” He makes a face, and then freezes and glances around, fearing someone caught it. “We'll have to see how it goes.”

That seems to be everyone's opinion on the evening, and Valira is ready to scream about it all. Still, she lets Haoti guide her to her seat. He's in between her and Seath, with the whole room's eyes on them if they care to look, but the speeches he tells her quietly as he pushes her chair in, aren't going to come until after dinner. All she has to do during is be polite, and since Lauren is on her other side and Vesta beyond that, that should be easy enough. All she has to do is ignore Seath.

When he sits down, he's oily and courteous, greeting Valira with a gracious “my lady” and asking after Vesta's latest story at her paper, which apparently involved the new school they're trying to build in the outskirts. With that done, he turns to Haoti and asks him about one of the treasury ministers, who apparently can't attend the dinner due to a family emergency, and Valira sighs with relief and turns to Lauren and Vesta, who are both more than happy to talk to her.

Dinner tastes good, though Valira forgets what's on her plate the second she doesn't have a mouthful of it, too aware of the press, too aware of Seath, too aware of Haoti sitting straight-backed and tense next to her, their knees occasionally knocking under the table but no more contact between them. Lauren looks just as unhappy, and Vesta is frowning too, in between making polite conversation with Valira, and the whole thing is miserable.

Eventually, as dessert is served and Valira makes polite noises over it, Lauren leans across Valira to discuss an upcoming bill with Haoti and Seath, something low-stakes that even Seath seems to grudgingly agree with, and Vesta meets Valira's eyes. “They'll talk shop all night. I want to get some air before the speeches start. Will security let you come along?”

Valira glances over at the wall, where Phi and Terry are standing around looking stoic, and raises her eyebrows, tilting her head to one of the doors that leads out to the public gardens rather than the rest of the palace. They exchange a look and a few quick words, and then Phi makes her way over. “Going outside, my lady?”

“If you think it's wise. Vesta wants some air, and it seems like a good time for it, before speeches.” She turns to Haoti, who's broken off his political conversation. “Your Majesty, do you mind if I excuse myself for one moment? Refresh myself before the talking starts?”

“Of course. I'll see you whenever you're ready.”

Phi, Vesta, and Valira extract themselves from the party easily enough, and Valira takes a few deep breaths once she's outside, enjoying the smell of the night air. Vesta wanders over to a nearby fountain, trailing her hands in the water. “You looked ready to get out of there,” she says after a moment.

Valira frowns. “Off the record?”

“I know you don't have the best experiences with people in my profession, but yes. Off the record.”

“I'm not a fan of parties. Especially political ones.”

“I can't say I am either. Especially not sitting at the most important table in the place.” Vesta shrugs, shakes some of the water from the fountain off her fingers. “The Prime Minister is a loss for me after too many work conversations at my dinner table, but I do like his Majesty better than I thought I would, after the way Lauren talked about him at first.”

Valira winces. “I got the impression she didn't like him, yes.”

“She's surprised at how well he's doing now, after he shut down her anti-corruption proposal as almost his first act of office.”

“He _what_?” says Valira, losing any attention she might have been paying to the cool of the evening. Even Phi, several feet away, makes a quiet surprised noise.

Vesta shakes her head. “I'm not really supposed to know, so you're not supposed to know, but Seath came to Lauren the day after the coronation and said the king had exercised his right to keep a bill from even hitting the parliament floor, when she'd submitted it just that morning and hadn't even expected him to be in the parliamentary office yet.”

Valira feels like someone's thrown a bucket of water on her. For a moment, there's blinding anger at Haoti, but it doesn't sit right. He's more than willing to take blame on himself for everything, even things he shouldn't. If he'd done it, he would have owned it, flagellated himself with it when Valira wondered why Lauren didn't like him. Something else happened. Seath happened, when the monarchy was in transition and the new young king was grieving. She swallows. “Was it like this bill? I mean, I know Lauren isn't fond of this one, but are they similar?”

“I never knew exactly what the proposals were—we're aware of the friction between our jobs—but I get the impression that some of the checks on the monarchy are the same, including the one that wouldn't let him exercise the right he did, but most of the ones on the PM and officers he appoints never made it to Seath's version. Are you okay, Valira?”

“Yes.” She looks at Phi, who's wide-eyed and horrified and understands just what Valira does and is just as much at a loss about what to do about it. “Thank you for telling me. It sounds like things were in turmoil then. Like maybe some things slipped through the cracks.”

Vesta gives her a sharp look. “Do you know something?”

“Nothing you could publish and not get sued for. But keep your ears open tonight.” She doesn't know what she can do, if there's anything she can do, as a citizen of Tyne and Haoti's guest, but something needs to be done. If it weren't clear before, it is now.

“Do we need to go back inside?”

Valira looks back at Phi, but she doesn't have some kind of magical answer yet, nothing Valira can use to stop this, publicly, before the vote happens in the morning, to at least let people know that Seath abused not only his power but misused Haoti's. She takes a deep breath, and clenches her fists to keep her hands from shaking. “Yes. I think we do.”

*

Inside, it's a kicked ant's nest, swarming with staff moving away plates and glasses and moving the chairs to a position where everyone can watch the speakers, can hear the speeches. Vesta, looking concerned, only kisses Lauren's cheek briefly before going to the press area, throwing a few looks at Valira as she goes.

Haoti finds her just before the speeches begin, leads her up to the front row, where they can sit next to each other before he's called up to follow Seath's speech. He frowns the second he sees her. “Are you okay? I thought being outside would help—if someone said anything to you—”

Valira shakes her head, a little too vigorously judging by his obvious worry. “No, just—a question. What's the first day you did any state business after your coronation?”

Haoti frowns. “I can't remember exactly.”

“Remember. What's the first bill you saw, the first—when did you start?”

“Valira, if there's something wrong—”

“Tell me.” She has to be sure this isn't him. It can't be, but she still has to be sure.

He shakes his head, still frowning, but after a few seconds, he answers. “I think I was so busy with state guests and my mother and public events that I didn't make it into my office for three days, and the first business I dealt with was something ceremonial—fealty agreements, I think, like Phi and Terry's Fairpoint Hold have with me. What's this about?”

Valira opens her mouth to tell him, but Seath chooses that moment to call the crowd to order, and she just shakes her head a little wildly, ignoring the way he tries to put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and sits down in her seat. “I don't know how to do this.”

“Tell me.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” says Seath. “Tonight we gather to celebrate tomorrow's vote on an anti-corruption bill that's close to my own heart. Tyne has prospered under its current form of governance, but it grows old-fashioned, and we need to change with the times.”

“He lied,” she whispers, feeling frantic with it. If she just had more _time_ , she could tell Haoti and Lauren what happened, let them find proof. Maybe she can, still, but Seath will still give his speech, and Haoti will still temper himself too much, and they'll lose the vote.

“There's never been a bill available to us that would do as much to eliminate corruption, the chance of it, and I'm honored to be able to speak in favor of it tonight. Even King Haoti will tell you that its protections against a monarch looking to seize power are wise, and even Lauren Gaford admits our corruption laws need updating, and I applaud her attempts to find common ground, even if I disagree with her quibbles over phrasing.”

“Valira, please—”

“He told Lauren you wouldn't allow her bill on the floor of parliament,” she whispers, and sees his flinch, the way his eyes widen. “Did you know?”

“What?”

He didn't. This is all Seath, every part of it, throwing away Lauren's bill but using the idea to put checks on everything but himself. Just feet in front of her, he's standing there saying something about balance, and Valira says “Liar,” just loud enough that a few heads near her snap in her direction. Even Seath falters a little, glancing in her direction, and Valira is so angry she could spit on him, but she contents herself with standing, ignoring the way Haoti's hand flexes like he wants to keep her from doing it. “Liar,” she says again, and this time it's loud enough for the microphone to pick it up.

Seath blinks, thrown off his stride, before he regains the oily, indulgent smile he likes using with her, the one that makes her skin crawl. “Lady Valira, this isn't a debate, and I don't appreciate your unfounded accusations—”

“If you believe in reform and differences in phrasing are just quibbles, why wasn't there a vote over Lauren Gaford's bill months ago?”

There's a mild sensation, and she can hear Lauren's sharp inhale, but Valira ignores it all. She's committed now, and she can do this in a way Haoti and Lauren can't. They need to be reasonable, and political. They can't shout at him and call him a liar, but she can. She's done it once, burned a bridge by saying something out of turn. She can survive the consequences again, even if it means leaving Tyne.

Seath raises an eyebrow. “I can't comment on bills that never reached the parliament floor—”

“Because you forged the royal seal on a veto, when Representative Gaford submitted her bill the day after the coronation and you immediately rejected it, while the king was busy with the new grief of his father's death and would never know that you did it?”

“You're standing here making unfounded accusations—and you've done it before, _princess_. This is not the moment.”

“It is. Because everyone can witness it, and no one's committed to something that's only going to help you and the people you want to help. The king wants to stay neutral, and Lauren would never have known that you killed her bill and stole the idea for your own, with a few modifications, so it's up to me, to call you the liar you are.” Valira swallows. “And I'll take the consequences. Prove me wrong. Prove the king of Tyne wrong, as he gracefully tells you that he believes in checks on his own power and that he would have done it a year ago, too.”

“This isn't a court of law, and you are embarrassing yourself.”

“So what if I am? Like I said, I can do this. I can let everyone know. They can do their own research, and see who they believe.” There are murmurs all over now, and camera flashes, and Haoti is silent, still in his seat, and not talking, and he's trying so hard for peace, to not be like his father, and she doesn't know if he'll forgive her for this. The thought makes her sick, but she lifts her chin and finishes anyway. “Tell us. Tell us all right here what happened. Because either you're a liar, or I am, and the king is, and others are too. Tell us Lauren Gaford never submitted a bill, or that Haoti put his seal on a veto of it. See if they agree with you.”

More camera flashes, and the first journalist calls out something about unfounded accusations, and Valira keeps her hands clenched tight and waits for Seath's response. “All of this is beneath responding to,” he says, so cold she wants to scream.

“Tell the press that,” she says. “I'm a citizen of Tyne, and I think we all deserve the truth about this.” She takes a deep breath. “So tell it. I'll stop now, but these people, they should all know that you suppressed a bill, and you should tell them why. Or all your anti-corruption talk means nothing at all, like I've always known it has.”

And she's back in the Greenwoods, seventeen and bold with her anger and the courage of her convictions and the knowledge that she's just gone too far for her life to remain the same. The room is in pandemonium, and Valira can't look at Haoti, can't look at Lauren or Vesta. Seath is still trying to be unctuous, speaking over the growing chatter, and Valira turns around and walks to the edge of the room, and knows Phi and Terry will be there.

Both of them look solemn, overwhelmed and confused and a hundred other things, but Terry offers her something like a smile. “Are you okay?”

“I'd like to go back to my room now, please,” she says, and her voice fails her like it didn't before, cracks in three places and dies out on the last word.

Whatever they see in her face, they don't try to argue with her. Terry starts clearing a path, and Phi puts a steady, calming hand on her back to escort her through the crowd. “You did right,” says Phi as they leave the room, but that's cold comfort.

*

An hour later, there's a knock on Valira's door while she's sitting on her bed staring at the plants she brought with her from Alya's house. They're still thriving. The citrus tree is even showing a few tentative buds. The valerian will need a new pot soon.

The knock comes again before she can get herself off the bed, and she steels herself and gets up. It's Quil and Kithri, of course, no doubt called in by Phi and Terry, who are hovering behind them and have probably been hovering at the door since she asked them for a few moments of privacy an hour ago. “Well, you've got the whole country in an uproar,” Kithri says, giving her a grin, and shoulders past her into the room.

“I really didn't mean to,” Valira says apologetically, not knowing who she's apologizing to.

Quil frowns at her, eyes wide and solemn. “Can we come in? We've been a bit worried since we heard. And since it hit the news, even Trilli's been texting me. You haven't answered your phone, apparently.”

“Right.” She hadn't even thought of Trilli, and that makes it all worse. Can she go back to Alya's house, where people know where to find her, even if it's to be near Trilli? “Yes, come in, sorry.”

Phi's the first one to zero in on the bag on her bed. “You're packing. What for?”

Valira stares at her. “What do you think? I can't stay here, not after all of that, whether I was right or not.” She steps out of the way of the door, and hopes they take it as an invitation. They do, and soon they're all four frowning at her, and Valira is trying to think of what to say. She wasn't allowed to see her cousins when they sent her away from the Greenwoods, but she thinks if she'd had to take her leave of them, it would have felt like this. “The press is talking about it already, enough that Trilli heard? I thought I would have a few hours while they wrote articles and waited for quotes and things.”

Kithri raises her eyebrows. “You think the television and radio cameras present weren't sending out a feed that was all-but-live as soon as you started talking? The whole continent will know by morning.”

Valira covers her face with her hands. “Shit. Are they believing me? Or was it a story about the king's crazy charity princess speaking out of turn again?”

“They're believing you,” Terry says firmly. “Apparently his Majesty and Lauren Gaford both got up and had a few things to say, once Seath had tried to save his great speech about solidarity and reform.”

“There was a quorum of assembly members in the room to vote on the spot to postpone the vote for a week,” Phi adds, which is enough comfort that Valira can bear to look at them again, until she continues. “Where are you packing to go?”

“Where do you think? To Alya's, to start, I think. I hope. If the press is too much, I have some savings, I can find somewhere—”

“We can't arrange anything tonight,” Phi says, firm. “Did you think you could just walk over to the transportation circle and get out this late? Even if it's determined you don't need a permanent security team, that would need working out.”

“And I think you need to talk to Haoti,” says Quil, and Valira gives her a wide-eyed look. Quil shrugs. “I know. But you need to talk to him. He never breathed a word against you when he got up to talk—the opposite, from what I hear—and he'll be hurt if he wakes up and you've just gone without saying anything. You insist on leaving? We'll miss you, but it's your choice. But he deserves at least a goodbye.”

“And an apology, probably,” says Valira, exhausted and sad all over again.

All four of them exchange a look. “I'll get on the radio and see where he is,” Terry says after a moment, and ducks out of her room, pressing a button on his headset as he goes.

“You've got nothing to apologize for,” Kithri says eventually. “Seath's needed taking down for years, and public humiliation is just what the healer ordered.”

“It doesn't matter if he deserved it or not,” Valira replies, exhausted. She's learned that lesson well enough. “It just matters that I put Haoti in a mess of a position when he asked me there to help him.”

Phi and Kithri both open their mouths, and Quil's hands twitch like she wants to reach out, but Terry chooses that moment to rap on the door and then open it again. “The king is almost back in his room. Give it ten minutes and we can go up. They'll warn him we're coming.”

“Ten minutes,” says Valira, and takes a deep breath. Nobody looks happy, and she doesn't feel that way, but at least she only has to wait ten minutes for whatever comes next. Her uncle made her cool her heels for hours.

*

To Valira's surprise, both of Haoti's bodyguards, on either side of his door, give her respectful nods when she arrives in the hall outside his private room. It's not far from the dining room where they eat their breakfasts, but it's his private space, and she feels like she's invading it. “He's expecting you, ma'am,” one of them says. “You can knock whenever you like.”

Phi and Terry, when she looks at them, don't offer her any excuses or comfort. Terry just smiles, and Phi nods to the door, and Valira plucks up her courage and knocks.

It's barely three seconds before Haoti opens the door, looking a little wild, half out of his suit and into something more comfortable. “My lady,” he says after a frozen, awkward moment of silence. “Please, come in. They said you were coming up.”

“I can come back if you need more time,” Valira says, and her voice has gone uneven again.

Quick as a flash, his hand is on her arm, and then gone again when she can't help flinching. “Please, come in. If you hadn't come up soon I would have gone down to you, but now I don't feel I'm invading your space.”

There's not much to say to that, so Valira steps through the door and shuts it behind her, then looks around when she can't manage to say what needs saying first. His door doesn't lead directly into a bedroom like hers does, but into something like an office, though all his important papers are locked up, or at least not left out. The room smells of plants and soil, full of potted plants on every surface that will hold them, and some hung by the windows, too—and by the balcony that overlooks her shade garden—in slightly different pots than all the others. “You have a garden in here,” she says, instead of anything she should.

“I don't make it outside as often as I want to. Valira—”

“I'm sorry.” It's easier to look at the plants than at him while she says it, at the line of spider plants hanging to either side of the balcony. “I should say that first. I should have told you quietly what was happening, you and Lauren, so you could take care of it subtly. Seath may have been in the wrong, but I've no doubt made difficulties for you with his party, and with the press. So I'm sorry. I won't make things harder in the future, I'm … I don't know if staying at Alya's is feasible, but I'll figure it out from there.”

“You're leaving?” Haoti asks, and it sounds as if she might as well have slapped him.

Valira makes herself look at him, and finds him standing, at a loss, in the middle of his own room, staring at her. Waiting for some kind of explanation. “How could I stay, after that? I've just made your life so much more difficult, and involved myself where I had no right to.”

“You had every right. I made you a citizen of Tyne myself. Why are you apologizing to me?” He takes a tentative step forward, and Valira holds her ground. “You're on my side. You were _helping_ me. And Lauren Gaford, who made feverish mention of taking you out for drinks, so prepare yourself for that. You don't have to apologize for anything.”

“Yes, I do. I made your life—”

“This isn't the Greenwoods,” Haoti says, gentle but firm, and takes another step forward. “I'm not your family. You can speak your mind whenever you want. I'm not going to ask you to stop.”

“You should.”

“No. I shouldn't. Do you want to know what happened in that room once you left?”

Valira swallows. “I hear you and Lauren smoothed things over, and they voted to postpone the vote on the bill.”

“Yes. It won't pass now. I made a strong statement that I saw no bill from Lauren in the first days of my reign, and she confirmed that Seath had told her in no uncertain terms that I had, and that I'd gone out of my way to exercise a privilege my father didn't use once to my knowledge to do it. I said that there should be laws to make sure that no one can ever think I would do that again because it shouldn't be a power I have in this day and age, and she explained the bones of the bill she wanted to pass. Seath left halfway through. His party is already talking about calling an emergency meeting to elect a new head, to try to salvage their majority before the next election.”

That's a lot to think about all at once, and Valira takes a moment to do it, overwhelmed. “That doesn't make any sense.”

“You pointed out a problem. We're trying to fix it. It was a little dramatic, maybe, but I don't mind that. Nobody but Seath does, and he used my seal when I was grieving my father, so I don't care if he minds the drama.” Haoti is trying to smile, she can tell, but it falters before it can turn into anything real. “Did you honestly think I would ask you to leave for this?”

“Yes. Of course I did. You still should.”

“I don't—my lady, maybe I haven't been clear. I've been trying to let you know you _could_ leave, because you seemed to want to, but I'll never ask you to. I'll never _want_ you to. I like having you here, I was—I was so unhappy before you came.”

Silence fills up the room after that. Haoti seems to be out of words, and Valira can't find any at all for too long a time. “You were lonely,” she finally says. She's thought it enough times.

“I was. So were you, before you came here, from what I can tell. But as soon as you got here, you made friends as easy as breathing, and you gave them to me as well.”

“And you gave me yours,” she reminds him. “Kalon and Frog.”

“Frog told me I should marry you after you spent an afternoon shoveling shit,” says Haoti, and then takes a sharp breath. She stares. “He wasn't wrong,” he finally adds. “Not that I'm asking—if you're not able to believe that I want you to stay, that's a long way off.”

Valira's head is swimming. She's not being asked to leave—she thought Haoti would regret it, but she thought he would do it anyway. She doesn't know what to do with him telling her he wants her to stay, and that he's thought of marrying her, and that she makes him happy, which seems the most impossible of all. “I'm a terrible idea,” she says, because she has to make him understand that. “Bad enough as your guest. Worse as—anything more. Tonight is proof of that.”

“Tonight is proof that you'll stand up when something is wrong. What more could I ask for?” He hesitates. “But if you think I'm a coward for not supporting you, or worse, for not doing anything about Seath before your arrival, I don't blame you for that.”

“Don't be stupid,” says Valira, and winces. “You're not a coward. You were trying to be neutral. I'm from the Greenwoods, remember? I understand that. It's why I'm worried that any second you're going to realize I ruined it for you.”

Haoti takes a deep breath. “I think we could both stand here all night telling each other all the reasons we should hate each other. But I don't. And I hope you don't.”

“Of course not.” Valira finally makes herself take a step forward. If they're closing the distance between them, he can't be the only one moving. “Where does that leave us? You're not proposing, which is smart, because I'd be a terrible queen.”

“It leaves us wherever you want to be. I want … I'm not proposing, you're right, not because I think you'd be a bad queen but because it's too soon for that, but beyond that, it's up to you. If you really want to go, I won't get in your way. If you want to stay, then it's your choice. Friends, something else.”

Something else. He's always been something else—an annoyance and a bully when they were children. A representation of a life she wasn't living when she saw him on the news. And now, the person she misses when she can't eat breakfast with him, who calls her “my lady” not as a formality but as an old-fashioned gesture of respect. And he's telling her she's something else for him too, and she can be selfish. If she's not going to be sent away this time, she can reach out. She wants to.

She does, and Haoti meets her halfway, and kisses her, presses in close until they're touching all over, arms around her, and even when the kiss ends, he keeps on holding on, and she holds on too. “Something else,” says Valira. “If you're foolish enough to keep me around, I think it has to be something else.”

“Then it will be something else,” he says, and she feels his smile more than sees it, with how close they still are. Close enough that it's the easiest thing in the world to kiss him again.

One of them is trembling a little, or maybe both of them, the excitement of the night translating itself, and Valira still feels shaky, like she had a narrow escape, but she can let that fade to the background, with only the vague thought that her friends are going to be very smug about how all her worries have worked out.

When they pull apart at last, Valira walks over to the balcony door for something to do, because she's too restless to stay still. “The spider plants don't match everything else,” she says. It's inane, but there's too much happening in her mind for her to say anything real.

There's a guilty silence that lasts until Valira turns around. Haoti has his hands stuffed in his pockets, head ducked. “Solomon brought them back, when he tried to convince you to come here. He can't keep a plant alive to save his life, and I took them to save them, and then, well—”

Valira doesn't know what he's going to add after that, because she's too busy kissing him again to care.

*

In the morning, they eat breakfast in his personal office instead of their usual room, both of them on the floor when neither of them can agree which of them should have the better chair. Haoti looks exhausted in a way that probably means he was probably up an hour after she left putting out fires, and up before dawn to continue the process, but he can't keep a smile off his face either, when she describes the texts she's getting from Trilli passing on messages from her cousins and then the mysterious and amusing _Good job_ she got from Star.

“Do you need anything from me today?” Valira asks when they've finished eating and she knows they can't stop the world from intruding much longer. There are secretaries just waiting to beat down his door with appointments with the press and majority leadership and minority leadership and a hundred other people.

“Dinner,” he says promptly. “If you want to explain what happened to Vesta in a few days, I think Lauren would be very pleased to set it up even if there might be some quibbling over journalistic ethics, but the rest of the business is barely mine to take care of, let alone yours. All I need to do is talk.”

She nods, considering. “Any word from Seath yet?”

“A public statement that he's innocent of all wrongdoing but will recuse himself from the vote on the corruption bill when it reaches the floor in a week's time. Unofficial word is that he's gone to ground in the country somewhere hoping it will all blow over, so you shouldn't see him around.”

“Think they'll vote him out?”

“I think they'll have to, but I don't want to speculate on it too much. We've done our jobs. All I can do now is support Lauren and her party however they ask.”

It's a far cry from his determination to be neutral, to study disinterest in government like his father did to keep away any accusations of interference. At least for now, it's a better way to do things. “And I'll support you however you ask.”

“All I want today is the promise of dinner at the end of all my meetings. Just you, or everyone, up to you.”

An easy invitation he never would have thought to give even two weeks ago, assuming her friends aren't his as well. “I'll see what everyone's plans are,” she says, and watches him smile.

*

She finds Quil in the garden after breakfast, and kneels down next to her to help with some good hard weeding. There's never been anything she's found that's better for clearing her head.

“How did your apology go?” Quil asks after a while, betraying a laugh with a quiver on the last word.

“I think I'm forgiven, but I think you know that already.”

Quil shrugs. “I ate breakfast with Phi and Terry this morning. Considering you were apparently in the king's room for nearly two hours and had little to say to them about the conversation last night, it seemed to me that things must have gone pretty well.”

“I am fairly sure it's treason that they told you that,” says Valira, mostly to watch Quil laugh. “Breakfast?”

“Not the same as your breakfasts,” Quil says, and ducks her head a little. “But it turns out the three of us have a day off on the same day coming up. They've invited me back to Fairpoint Hold to meet their family, and spend some time together outside of the palace. It's … I think it will get there.”

“Well, I'll wish the three of you the best,” Valira says.

They weed together in silence for a long time, making short work of a few rows of vegetables that will be ripe very soon. “I think,” says Quil, “that we're going to get it.”

_A few months later_

Lost Flame is one of the best things about Valira's routine, second only to near-daily breakfasts with Haoti, even when her work shifts there involve more shoveling manure than anything else. She goes out three times a week, in the truck she insisted on bringing up from Alya's, and does whatever Frog and Kalon ask her to, and sometimes can even wheedle herself into going without bodyguards, arguing that the sheep will eat anyone who annoys her, let alone attacks her.

It's only been a month since Phi agreed, and Valira still relishes the quiet drives, the real solitude when Kalon and Frog take advantage of her presence to leave on errands.

She relishes sorting out spats between two of the sheep on a rainy day when their wool reeks somewhat less. “There's plenty of meat for all of you,” she says for at least the third time. “No one is getting fed better cuts, and if you want better cuts, then be faster when we throw the food out.”

“There is never enough fish,” one of the chief plaintiffs in the matter says. “You promised us fish, and we still don't get enough.”

“I personally fed you a whole salmon this morning,” Valira reminds her, which only gets her a sheep's version of a scoff. She turns to Frog, who's leaning on the gate of the pen, grinning unsympathetically. “Apparently there's not enough fish.”

“If you want to convince Haoti to increase his donations for sheep food, feel free. There's a reason we hired the future queen of Tyne to work here.”

Frog makes a joke like that at least once a shift. In the past month or so, Valira has stopped arguing with him. “I might, if it makes the sheep shut up. Yes, I mean you, Wool of Starlight.”

“Is that really her name?” Haoti asks from a ways away, and Valira turns around to grin at him. “Hello, there. What's this about fish?”

“They don't have enough. Hello. Was I supposed to be expecting you?” Haoti strolls closer, along with Phi and Terry, who aren't usually on his detail but mind the more exotic sights of Lost Flame less than everyone else, and Valira waits for him to get close enough that she can take his hand. “I'm off in an hour.”

Haoti lifts her hand to kiss it, as ridiculously courtly as he ever is. “No, but I finished my meeting early. We've been invited to Norene, to meet some of the clan groups in the mountains that are technically an independent state. I thought you wouldn't want to go, but apparently they tame mammoths.”

“If there are mammoths, I am _definitely_ going.”

“She's going to adopt one and you don't have the fencing for that,” says Frog. “Have you seen my husband?”

“On the phone yelling at someone about not feeding direwolves dog food.” Haoti hops the fence so he and Valira are on the same side of it and offers his hand for the nearest sheep to sniff. She doesn't even try to bite him, so maybe the general unrest in the flock is starting to dissipate. “Solomon will go with us to Norene, but he's probably going to stay there when we leave. Says I'm doing well enough on my own now.”

She and Solomon will never be easy with each other, exactly, but she knows enough to squeeze his hand, a moment of comfort. “When?”

“A month or so. You won't have to miss your visit south for Trilli's vacation. I wouldn't have asked you to go in that case, I know she thinks a few of your other cousins might make it.”

“And we won't have to miss our visit to Aredhel,” she says, since she doesn't want to talk about her other cousins in front of Frog right now. The visits with the queen are still awkward, even more awkward than her interactions with Solomon, but there's some kind of hope there.

“I still think you could get us more fish,” says Wool of Starlight, insistent, and Valira laughs. “Land food is boring. We should get to go fishing.”

She looks over her shoulder at Frog. “Have you got a pond on this property? You could stock it, and I could try to explain sustainable fishing to them.” He just rolls his eyes and she turns back to Haoti. “Sorry, I don't want to waste the magic.”

“I can wait,” he promises, and leans back on the fence to prove it.

Valira wades back into the argument, and manages to sort out the immediacy of it in the few minutes that her magic lasts, until she can let it go and go back to the fence. Frog has gone, while she talked to them, probably back to the house to make fun of Kalon while he argues on the phone, since his latest venture trying to be a consultant on arcane animal care has mostly led to him ranting that no one should be allowed to have any such thing. “So, to what do I owe the honor? You could have told me that at home. Did you just want a visit?”

Haoti shrugs. “It had been a week or so, and also I wanted to ask you about dinner.”

She bumps her shoulder against his. “Oh? What about dinner?”

“Quil heard about a new restaurant in the city from Lauren and Vesta, she thought the five of us could meet there. Well, she said six, but Kithri said that the five of us are sickening and she doesn't want to go on our double dates.” Valira looks doubtfully down at her clothes, and he smiles at her. “Don't worry, you have time to change. I could have just texted, this visit is really just a visit.”

“Then I'd be glad to go out.”

“Hey, princess,” Frog calls from halfway to the barn, “we're not paying you to moon around. You and his Majesty can come get some hay out of the loft and clean out some stalls before your shift is up.”

“Coming,” she yells, and turns to Haoti with a smile. “What do you say? Mind a little hard labor?”

“Much better than meetings,” he assures her, and takes her hand to help her over the fence, like she needs the help, and start walking up to the barn. Frog's expression, as they get closer, is nothing short of gleeful, and Terry winks at Valira as she passes him and Phi, so probably he's sticking them with some of the worse stalls, but she doesn't mind that so much. It's honest work, and she doesn't plan to give it up even if his teasing comes true and she does marry Haoti. If it's not mucking stalls, it's shearing sheep who can bite if she nicks them or helping to build an obstacle course for the rats when they get bored.

There's always something to do, at work or at home, where she works in the gardens with Quil and attends dinners with Haoti and sometimes finds herself shocked at the life she's living, at how many people are around her, asking for her time, helping her tend her plants and dragging her away from the gardens to see other parts of the world.

“You say that now, but you haven't seen the state of the pen that hippogriff was staying in last week,” she says, pulling him up the hill.

“I think we're going to be fine,” he says, a little too serious.

Valira looks over her shoulder and slows down a little even if it will make Frog roll his eyes at her. “Probably,” she says, matching his tone, but it's too beautiful an afternoon to be serious for long, so she squeezes his hand and starts going faster again. “But then again, you haven't smelled hippogriff manure.”

Haoti laughs and speeds up too, until they're almost running up the hill, Phi and Terry trailing behind them and Frog waiting to mock them at the top.

It's a little awkward, jogging with their hands clasped, but Valira makes sure she never lets go.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Trilli's Roadtrip](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17925200) by [soc_puppet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soc_puppet/pseuds/soc_puppet)




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